Emily Hanford is a journalist who achieved fame by making a podcast called “Sold a Story” about the “science of reading.”
Hanford rediscovered a federal report released in April 2000.
The report was prepared by a panel of reading researchers and titled Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (NIH Pub. No. 00-4769). The panel recommended explicit and systematic phonics. The five keys to effective reading instruction, it concluded, are five key concepts: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Hanford called this approach “the science of reading.”
Hanford argued that the findings of this report had been suppressed by an education establishment wedded to balanced literacy. When her claims were buttressed by reports of a “Mississippi Miracle,” in which 4th grade scores on NAEP soared, state legislatures reacted. Most passed laws requiring the teaching of “the science of reading” and banning approaches connected to balanced literacy, and the techniques associated with Lucy Calkins, professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, the most prominent exponent of balanced literacy.
Hanford, who is neither a teacher nor an education researcher, recently released the second season of “Sold a Story.” This time, she discovered the Direct Instruction method that Sigfried Engelmann developed. (To see the episodes of “Sold a Story, season 2,” Google the term).
As with “the science of reading,” Hanford argued that this extremely effective instructional method had been dismissed and buried by the educational establishment.
Engelmann was certain that his method of instruction, which was based on behaviorist psychology principles, was the one method that would leave no children behind. In 1968, the federal government launched a study to determine which pedagogy worked best with the most disadvantaged students. It was a large scale study that involved more than 200,000 students in K-3 in a trial of nine different models of instruction. At the end of nine years, direct instruction was declared the most effective pedagogy. But winning the competition did not lead to widespread adoption of DI.
Why?
Hanford looks back almost 50 years and sees a conspiracy to suppress the results of the contest. DI “won,” but its victory did not lead to the widespread adoption of DI.
In reality, it’s more complicated. There is no single instructional method that is universally in use in the schools of the U.S. Most teachers probably use mixed methods. No one really knows. There are surely teachers who don’t like the idea of a tightly scripted curriculum.
I don’t like the idea of state legislatures mandating how to teach reading.
I don’t like the idea of state legislatures mandating how to teach anything or everything.
If teachers want to adopt DI, go for it.
If they have a different way of teaching that turns their students into eager learners, good for them.
I have a problem with states mandating how professionals should do their work. I don’t want them to tell surgeons how to perform surgery or dentists how to do their work or airline pilots how to fly or lawyers how to do their work. That’s not the job of legislatures.
Here is a summary of the teaching of DI:
https://share.google/0ia2T9pEzDPqOHEcc
Here are some interesting critiques of “Sold Story, second season.”
Daniel Willingham, cognitive scientist.
A conversation between Trevor Aleo and Nick Covington about Emily Hanford’s “Sold a Story, Season 2.”
*Episodes 1 & 2: https://trevoraleo.substack.com/p/in-conversation-reflections-on-sold?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios
*Episode 3: https://trevoraleo.substack.com/p/in-conversation-reflections-on-sold-6a4?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios
*Episode 4: https://trevoraleo.substack.com/p/in-conversation-sold-a-story-season?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios
*Episode 5: https://trevoraleo.substack.com/p/in-conversation-sold-a-story-season-5cd?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios
Paired texts: https://trevoraleo.substack.com/p/paired-texts-for-sold-a-story-season?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios
Larry Ferlazzo, “What ‘Sold a Story’ Misses About Direct Instructuon,” Education Week, https://share.google/Z0HhUAWDKOtC97DAS