There鈥檚 a settled body of research on how best to teach early reading. But when it comes to the multitude of curriculum choices that schools have, it鈥檚 often hard to parse whether well-marketed programs abide by the evidence.
And making matters more complicated, there鈥檚 no good way to peek into every elementary reading classroom to see what materials teachers are using.
鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of an understudied issue,鈥� said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can鈥檛, and What Can Be Done About It. "[These programs] are put out by large publishers that aren鈥檛 very forthcoming. It鈥檚 very hard for researchers to get a hold of very basic data about how widely they鈥檙e used.鈥�
Now, some data are available. In a nationally representative survey, the Education Week Research Center asked K-2 and special education teachers what curricula, programs, and textbooks they had used for early reading instruction in their classrooms.
The top five include three sets of core instructional materials, meant to be used in whole-class settings: The Units of Study for Teaching 69传媒, developed by the Teachers College 69传媒 and Writing Project, and Journeys and Into 69传媒, both by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. There are also two early interventions, which target specific skills certain students need more practice on: Fountas & Pinnell鈥檚 Leveled Literacy Intervention and 69传媒 Recovery.
An Education Week analysis of the materials found many instances in which these programs diverge from evidence-based practices for teaching reading or supporting struggling students.
At this point, it鈥檚 widely accepted that reading programs for young kids need to include phonics鈥攁nd every one of these five programs teaches about sound-letter correspondences. What varies, though, is the nature of this instruction. In some cases, students master a progression of letter-sound relationships in a set-out sequence. In others, phonics instruction is less systematic, raising the possibility that students might not learn or be assessed on certain skills.
Phonics is 鈥渂uried鈥� in many commercial reading programs, Seidenberg said. Teachers might be able to use what鈥檚 there to construct a coherent sequence, he said, or they might not.
And frequently, these programs are teaching students to approach words in ways that could undermine the phonics instruction they are receiving.
Several of these interventions and curricula operate under the understanding that students use multiple sources of information, or 鈥渃ues,鈥� to solve words. Those can include the letters on the page, the context in which the word appears, pictures, or the grammatical structure of the sentence.
Observational studies show that poor readers do use different sources of information to predict what words might say. But studies also suggest that skilled readers don鈥檛 read this way. Neuroscience research has shown that skilled readers process all of the letters in words when they read them, and that they read connected text very quickly.
Even so, many early reading programs are designed to teach students to make better guesses, under the assumption that it will make children better readers. The problem is that it trains kids to believe that they don鈥檛 always need to look at all of the letters that make up words in order to read them.
Still, teachers may not know that cueing strategies aren鈥檛 in line with the scientific evidence base around teaching reading, said Heidi Beverine-Curry, the co-founder of The 69传媒 League, an organization that promotes science-based reading instruction.
Classroom teachers also aren鈥檛 usually the people making decisions about what curriculum to use. In Education Week鈥檚 survey, 65 percent of teachers said that their district selected their primary reading programs and materials, while 27 percent said that the decision was up to their school.
Even when teachers want to question their school or district鈥檚 approach, they may feel pressured to stay silent. Education Week spoke with three teachers from different districts who requested that their names not be used in this story, for fear of repercussions from their school systems.
Cueing Strategies Persist
69传媒 Recovery, the 1st grade intervention used by about 20 percent of teachers surveyed, was developed in the 1970s by New Zealand researcher Marie Clay. Thirty-minute lessons are delivered one-on-one, and generally follow a similar structure day to day. The idea is to catch students early before they need more intensive intervention, said Jeff Williams, a 69传媒 Recovery Teacher-Leader in the Solon school district in Ohio.
69传媒 read books they鈥檝e read several times before, and then read a book that they鈥檝e only read once, the day before, while the teacher takes a 鈥渞unning record.鈥� Here, the teacher marks the words that the student reads incorrectly and notes which cue the child apparently used to produce the wrong word.
For example, if a child reads the word 鈥減ot鈥� instead of 鈥渂ucket,鈥� a teacher could indicate that the student was using meaning cues to figure out the word.
During the rest of the lesson, students practice letter-sound relationships, write a short story, and assemble words in a cut-up story. At the end, they read a new book.
The program also requires intensive teacher training, which is administered through partner colleges.
Fountas & Pinnell鈥檚 Leveled Literacy Intervention follows a similar lesson structure, but it鈥檚 delivered in a small group format rather than one-on-one.
In both programs, text is leveled according to perceived difficulty. Teachers are told to match students to books at a just-right level, with the idea that this will challenge but not overwhelm them.
69传媒 in the lowest levels read predictable text: books in which the sentence structure is similar from page to page, and pictures present literal interpretations of what the text says. One LLI book, for example, follows a girl as she gets dressed to go sledding in winter. 鈥淟ook at my pants,鈥� the first page reads, facing an image of the girl holding up a pair of pants. 鈥淟ook at my jacket,鈥� is on the next page, with a photo of the girl pointing to a jacket.
Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, the founders of LLI, declined an interview for this story through their publisher, Heinemann. The company also declined to comment.
The main point of disagreement concerns these predictable texts and the teaching methods that align to them. For Williams, the 69传媒 Recovery teacher leader in Ohio, predictable text can be a useful orienting tool when children are still learning how print works. The repetitive sentence structure demonstrates that words have consistent meaning, and the frequent pictures provide a context to link to the words, he said.
He gave the word 鈥渉ippopotamus鈥� as an example. By pointing out that 鈥渉ippopotamus鈥� starts with the letter 鈥渉,鈥� and linking that word to a relevant picture and story context, the student can connect the word and the meaning of the word.
鈥淲hen it鈥檚 in isolation and we just say arbitrarily, 鈥楾his shape makes this sound,鈥� that鈥檚 a little abstract for little kids,鈥� Williams said.
But other experts say using predictable text this way teaches young children the wrong understanding of how the English language works.
鈥淵ou build this foundation of, English is a language that I have to memorize,鈥� said Tiffany Peltier, a doctoral student at Oklahoma University, who studies reading instruction.
But kids don鈥檛 memorize words to learn them. Instead, they decode the letter-sound correspondences. After several exposures, the word becomes recognizable on sight, through a process called orthographic mapping.
Of course, a picture of a hippopotamus can convey useful information. It could help a child understand what the animal looks like, or what it might do in the wild. But a picture of a hippo won鈥檛 help the child read the word.
In predictable texts, students don鈥檛 have to recognize the individual sounds in the word, said Peltier, even though learning how to do that is highly correlated with reading ability. So do 69传媒 Recovery and LLI attend to the sounds in words at all?
Both have daily sections for letter and word work. 69传媒 Recovery tests students on 50 phonemes when they enter the program, and teachers target the ones that students don鈥檛 know, said Williams.
But basing instruction around individual student errors鈥攔ather than progressing through a systematic structure鈥攃an leave some gaps, said Kristen Koeller, the educator outreach manager at Decoding Dyslexia California, who used to be a 69传媒 Recovery teacher.
For example, she said, she might have a student who didn鈥檛 know the /ow/ sound, like in the words 鈥渉ow鈥� or 鈥渨ow.鈥� Koeller would work with the student on that sound, but she wasn鈥檛 expected to explain the difference between when 鈥渙w鈥� makes the /ow/ sound, like in 鈥渉ow,鈥� and when 鈥渙w鈥� makes and /o/ sound, like in 鈥渟how.鈥�
Phonics does happen in 69传媒 Recovery lessons, she said. 鈥淏ut it is not systematic, it is not multisensory, and it depends largely on the teacher鈥檚 knowledge base and the book that is selected.鈥�
LLI does include a scope and sequence for phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. But students enter the program at different points, and it鈥檚 possible that they might need more practice with skills that are deemed below their level鈥攐r that they will exit the intervention before they reach all of the sound-letter correspondences that they don鈥檛 know.
The company, Fountas & Pinnell Literacy, in grades K-2. Both are from the Center for Research in Educational Policy at the University of Memphis, and both were funded by Heinemann, which publishes LLI.
The , which the company calls its 鈥済old standard鈥� study, found that kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders who received LLI made greater gains than students who received no intervention. But these gains were only consistent on Fountas & Pinnell鈥檚 own assessment, rather than an external validator of reading achievement. Results on DIBELS, a separate early literacy test, were mixed. Kindergartners and 1st graders in the treatment group did better than the control group on some subtests, but 2nd graders saw no difference.
69传媒 Recovery, by contrast, has a much stronger evidence base for effectiveness. Most notably, an found that students who received the intervention did better on assessments of overall reading, reading comprehension, and decoding compared to similar students who received their schools鈥� traditional literacy interventions. But even that study has invited controversy.
Psychologists James W. Chapman and William E. Tunmer published , arguing that many of the lowest-achieving students were excluded from the program, potentially inflating success rates.
The executive director of the 69传媒 Recovery Council of North America did not respond to requests for comment.
Three core instructional programs also made the top five most popular list among teachers, according to the Education Week survey: The Units of Study for Teaching 69传媒, by Heinemann, and Journeys and Into 69传媒, both by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Units of Study for Teaching 69传媒 was developed by Lucy Calkins, a researcher and the founding director of the Teachers College 69传媒 and Writing Project.
The program follows a 鈥渞eader鈥檚 workshop鈥� model. Teachers give a short 鈥渕ini-lesson鈥� at the beginning of class, and then students spend the majority of time practicing that skill independently as the teacher monitors them and works with small groups.
鈥淲e think about what is it that a good reader does. What is the life that a good reader leads?鈥� Calkins . 鈥淪o above all, that means putting reading front and center.鈥�
Calkins declined an interview for this story through her publisher, Heinemann. The company also declined to comment on the program itself.
Units of Study instills these reading habits in children, and teaches them that reading is something to value, said Susan Chambre, an assistant professor of education at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. It also introduces a variety of genres and gives students choice in what they read. 鈥淭he fact that we are immersing kids in literature鈥攖hat is important,鈥� Chambre said.
But Chambre struggled with Units of Study when she used it as a kindergarten teacher in an inclusion classroom. The program assumed a lot of knowledge鈥攐f oral language, of phonics鈥攖hat students just didn鈥檛 have. Chambre would watch children mumble through sentences, making up words by looking at the pictures.
鈥淔or those kids who come in [to school] and can learn foundational skills easily, and have a fair amount of general knowledge and a fair amount of vocabulary, they would come out okay,鈥� Meredith Liben, the senior fellow for strategic initiatives at Student Achievement Partners, said of the Units of Study for Teaching 69传媒.
But a lot of students don鈥檛 come into school with that knowledge, and the program isn鈥檛 explicit enough to fill in the gaps, Chambre said. Starting in kindergarten, students are taught reading 鈥渟uper powers鈥� that encourage them to 鈥渟earch for meaning, use picture clues, and use the sound of the first letter of a word to help them read,鈥� according to kindergarten sample lessons downloaded from the Heinemann website. One sample lesson encourages teachers to say things like 鈥淐heck the picture,鈥� 鈥淭ry something,鈥� or 鈥淒oes that look right?鈥� when students struggle, which prompts students to take their eyes off of the letters in a word.
In a of her program, Calkins wrote that asking students to guess or 鈥渢ry it鈥� when they come to hard words teaches reading stamina. She also argued that there is value in predictable texts for young children, who are 鈥渁pproximating reading鈥� when they rely on syntax and picture clues.
Though billed as a core reading program, the Units of Study in 69传媒 doesn鈥檛 teach phonemic awareness or phonics systematically or explicitly. 鈥淎t best it鈥檚 a suggestion, and there鈥檚 a lot of focus on the three-cueing system,鈥� Liben said.
The Teachers College 69传媒 and Writing Project recently released a separate phonics program, the Units of Study in Phonics. In her recent statement, Calkins emphasized the importance of a systematic phonics program, and said it would be a 鈥渨ise move鈥� for teachers to include more decodable texts in lessons with emerging readers. Still, imply that the company believes phonics should not play a central role in the classroom.
鈥淧honics instruction needs to be lean and efficient,鈥� the materials read. 鈥淓very minute you spend teaching phonics (or preparing phonics materials to use in your lessons) is less time spent teaching other things.鈥�
69传媒 of Choices
The other two core instructional programs, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt鈥檚 Journeys and Into 69传媒, differ in some significant ways from the rest of this list. Into 69传媒 is the company鈥檚 newer product鈥攖his is its first academic year in schools. According to HMH, more than 6.7 million students use Journeys in school.
Both programs include an explicit, systematic program in phonemic awareness and phonics. In an emailed statement to Education Week, a representative for HMH wrote that the company suggests teachers follow this sequence, as phonics skills build cumulatively. Decodable texts are available for purchase.
Because these programs are meant to be comprehensive, they include lessons and resources for teaching other foundational skills鈥攍ike writing letters, spelling, and fluency鈥攁s well as explicit vocabulary instruction, anchor texts and student texts, writing instruction, and comprehension instruction.
Seidenberg, who has reviewed the Journeys materials but not Into 69传媒, said that the amount of materials, lessons, and instructional choices in the program was overwhelming. 鈥淚t looks like the publisher鈥檚 response to all the debate about reading instruction was to make sure that they included everything,鈥� he said.
In the emailed statement, HMH said that teachers can 鈥渃hoose from a variety of resources to make the best instructional decisions for their students and to align with district curriculum requirements.鈥�
When Milton Terrace Elementary in Ballston Spa, N.Y., started using Journeys, teachers were using the materials differently, said Kathleen Chaucer, the principal. (The school is no longer using the program.) For example鈥攅ven though the program offers decodable books, kids were practicing in leveled texts, which didn鈥檛 offer opportunities to use patterns they learned, Chaucer said.
Journeys includes six teacher manuals for its 1st grade program alone, Seidenberg said. 鈥淭here is so much information in those teacher manuals, it raises serious questions about whether anyone is actually using them,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd if they are using them, are they just picking through them to find the pieces that they鈥檙e comfortable with?鈥� Chaucer said that鈥檚 what happened at her school.
A Perfect Program?
It鈥檚 hard to find a perfect curriculum, said Blythe Wood, an instructional coach in the special education department at the Pickerington school district, and the vice president of the International Dyslexia Association of Central Ohio.
She鈥檚 critical of Leveled Literacy Intervention, specifically, for the focus it puts on looking at words as wholes, and the lack of decodable text. But there are good and bad parts to most commercial materials, she said.
鈥淭he knowledge base of the teacher, and being able to identify the needs of the student, are more important than a boxed program,鈥� Wood said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to meet every kid with one box.鈥�
Taking a hard look at curriculum is important鈥攂ut more important is making sure teachers have the training they need to evaluate practices themselves, said Beverine-Curry, of The 69传媒 League. 鈥淛ust handing teachers materials or a program or a curriculum is not going to do the job.鈥�
