If you thought whole-language reading instruction had been relegated to the scrap heap of history, think again. Many such programs (proven to be ineffective) are still around, but they're hiding behind phrases like "balanced literacy" in order to win contracts from school districts and avoid public scrutiny. Louisa Moats calls them out in Fordham's new report, Whole-Language High Jinks.

Moats, a psychologist and widely respected authority on early reading, authored a previous Fordham report in October 2000 called Whole Language Lives On. In it, she uncovered many whole-language programs hiding behind the phrase "balanced literacy" in order to win contracts from school districts and avoid public scrutiny.

Seven years later, such programs still exist-and still try to pull the wool over educators' eyes. Worse, major school systems, including Denver, Salt Lake City, and New York City, continue to adopt them, misled by materials that "talk the talk," touting the five elements of effective reading instruction identified by the National Reading Panel, but which are actually just whole-language programs in disguise.

In this practitioners’ guide, renowned reading expert Louisa Moats (author of the American Federation of Teachers’ Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science and an earlier Thomas B. Fordham Foundation report, Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of “Balanced” Reading Instruction) explains how educators, parents, and concerned citizens can spot ineffective reading programs that surreptitiously hide under the “scientifically-based” banner.

While the field of reading has made enormous strides in recent years—especially with the publication of the National Reading Panel’s landmark report and enactment of the federal Reading First program— discredited and ineffectual practices continue in many schools. Although the term “whole language” is rarely used today, programs based on its premises, such as Reading Recovery, Four Blocks, Guided Reading, and especially “balanced literacy,” are as popular as ever. These approaches may pay lip service to reading science, but they fail to incorporate the content and instructional methods proven to work best with students learning to read. Some districts, such as Denver, openly shun research-based practices, while others, such as Chicago, fail to provide clear, consistent leadership for principals and teachers, who are left to reinvent reading instruction, school by school.

Ironically, partial responsibility for this unfortunate situation can be laid at the door of the National Reading Panel and its “five essential components” of effective reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). While the essential components named by the panel embody the fundamentals of effective instructional practices, they also oversimplify the complex language processes involved in learning to read. More worrisome, that list of components allows publishers, authors, and program developers wiggle-room to claim adherence to reading science merely by mentioning them in their marketing materials and asserting that the program incorporates them. The purpose of this guide is to help savvy educators and parents see through the deception to spot programs that truly are research based—and those that are not.

Moats exposes popular but scientifically untenable practices in reading instruction, including

• use of memorization, picture cues, and contextual guessing for teaching word recognition, justified by the faulty “three cueing systems” theoretical model, instead of direct, systematic teaching of decoding and comprehension skills
• substitution of “teacher modeling” and reading aloud for explicit, organized instruction
• rejection of systematic and explicit phonics, spelling, or grammar instruction
• confusion of phonemic awareness with phonics
• reliance on “leveled” books and trade books to organize instruction
• and use of whole-language approaches for English language learners.

She suggests ways of separating the wheat from the chaff and explains that good reading programs

• use valid screening measures to find children who are at risk and provide them with effective, early instruction in phonology and oral language; in word recognition and reading fluency; and in comprehension and writing skills
• interweave several components of language (such as speech sounds, word structure, word meaning, and sentence structure) into the same lessons
• build fluency in both underlying reading skills and text reading, using direct methods such as repeated readings of the same text
• incorporate phonemic awareness into all reading instruction, rather than treating it as an isolated element
• go beyond the notion of phonics as the simple relationship between letters and sounds to include lessons on word structure and origins
• build vocabulary from the earliest levels by exposing students to a broad, rich curriculum; and
• support reading comprehension by focusing on a deep understanding of topic and theme rather than just a set of strategies and gimmicks.

Identified and taught properly using scientifically-based reading research (SBRR) programs, students at risk of reading failure actually have good prospects for success.

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Last modified: September 22, 2008