These Steps Can Help Us Teach Johnny to Read

This is a critical time in our country’s efforts to extend the educational franchise. The initiatives announced by President Bush this week signal his administration’s interest in putting matters educational, especially as they pertain to reading, at the top of the national agenda. It is no accident that on his first workday as president, Bush and his wife, a former teacher and librarian, convened a meeting of literacy researchers and educators at the White House. It’s too bad that this meeting was overshadowed by more volatile issues such as vouchers and abortion.

Whatever your political leanings and whatever you think of how the last election was won, you can be sure of one thing: the president and first lady are committed to the cause of helping all children acquire and productively use literacy. “No child left behind” will be the administration’s mantra.

Skeptics will counter that this campaign is a diversionary tactic that absolves us (and the administration) of responsibility to address more fundamental issues of equity and the distribution of opportunity. But helping all children learn to read and write well is an equity and opportunity issue. Economic and social disparities will not disappear once everyone learns to read. But true universal literacy is likely to help narrow economic and social gaps. One of the meeting’s participants said, “Learning to read is now a civil right.” In this information age, the person who cannot read and write is deeply disadvantaged--intellectually, economically, socially, politically.

As the Bush administration launches its initiatives, it would be good to remember some of the things we are pretty sure of about helping children learn to read and write. We have often expended far too much energy on what we don’t know or have conflicting evidence or opinions about. Certainly we must vigorously pursue additional knowledge. But just as certainly, we cannot let disagreement obscure what we have reasonable confidence about.

One thing we know is that reading is a complex act. It seems easy once you know how to do it, but reading requires the coordination of a number of processes: knowing letters and sounds, spelling patterns, the meaning of the words being read, how collections of words combine to form phrases and longer pieces of text and how to apply what you know in order to understand what you read. A reading program that ignores any of these is unlikely to be successful. “Back to basics” fans like to trumpet the line that “phonics works.” But they’re only partly right. Phonics in a vacuum--in the absence of purpose and meaning, in other words, interesting things to read and hear and talk about--won’t help children learn to read well.

Another thing we know is that reading is not natural. Unlike spoken language, we are not genetically predisposed to read and write. Oral language evolved tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago and has been part of human evolution ever since. Written language is a much more recent creation. Put children in an environment where people are talking with them, and almost always they will learn to speak just fine. The same is not true about reading.

Reading with and to children helps, but by itself it is hardly ever sufficient. Die-hard advocates of “whole language” might dislike it, but most children (and older learners for that matter) benefit from explicit instruction in the mechanics and techniques of reading, such as knowing how to pair letters and sounds and knowing how letters combine to form words (phonics).

A third thing we know is that an important precursor to reading is “phonological awareness.” This refers to the awareness that spoken words are made up of sounds, known as “phonemes.” For example, “cat” is made up of three phonemes: /c/, /a/ and /t/. Studies have shown that children who have learned a large number of nursery rhymes are more phonologically aware. Why? Because they have become attuned to the sounds made by parts of words. Phonological awareness can be taught.

More important, teaching it, along with letters and their sounds, helps children be more successful in reading’s early stages. Learning letters and phonological awareness (as well as language and vocabulary) should be part of preschool curricula, especially in programs such as Head Start that serve children at risk for poor reading achievement.

We know other things as well; for example, that effective professional development helps teachers become more effective in teaching reading; that ongoing classroom assessment helps teachers zero in and help children who are having difficulties; and that effective leadership from principals increases the likelihood a program will be successful.

For too long, we have operated under the “one-third” rule, which is how teachers have traditionally grouped children for reading: One-third will do well; one-third will do so-so and one-third--well, what can you expect? They’re not ready or their parents are poorly educated or they’re not motivated or they just don’t get it or any one of a number of excuses.

The time for excuses and for dividing children into thirds is over. We must forge a consensus around the foundation for creating coherent, effective programs that give each child an adequate chance to become a successful reader and writer.