I teach 3rd grade in a southern state and we’ve had 3rd grade retention forever and I really don’t understand why it’s only us.
If you make it 3rd grade and can’t read there’s not that much magic we can do in one year and it’s a lot to ask in Two. We have a ton of comprehension standards to teach too. Like why not just do this every year or every other instead of a one time fear laden anti-jubilee. But if you were going to do it first seems to me much more pivotal as every grade after that significantly weights read to learn over learn to read more.
Even if it is stressful I kind of like the focusing it does for everyone and with most family’s it becomes an us against the test dynamic since my opinion doesn’t really matter.
The notion that students who can't read or write shouldn't be allowed to advance through school sounds merciless, but it's important I think — it's important unless you don't believe that kids need to learn how to communicate with text… which is what I *do* believe.
…
What if there were a *persistent* threat of retention, not only in the 3rd grade, but in every primary school grade? Would the effects of this threat focus the efforts of students during their entire educations?
There is a real debate as to whether retention in 4th grade actually leads to durable gains into 8th and 12th grade. If the gains don’t persist then you are spending 7% more to educate the retained kids for no real reason.
A lot of these studies seem focused on “does retention help the kids who are held back” and not “does a culture of holding kids back mean that teachers get marginal students over the line, so they master reading by 3rd grade”
And the racial disparity concerns seem aimed in the wrong direction. The problem isn’t that too many black kids are held back, it’s that too many black kids aren’t being taught to read (putting them in danger of retention)
Agreed on the racial disparity thing. But if the main benefit of retention is to incentivize better focus and improved performance for non retained students, there has to be a better and cheaper way to do that.
I would also say the Mississippi 8th grade reading scores which have improved a lot but are still below the national average, are consistent with a temporary bump from 3rd/4th grade retention which fades over time.
I think Mississippi has done a lot of good work but I really doubt they have gone from 49th to 7th in 10 years.
I mean I’d love to read all about it but it genuinely lights a fire under family’s in a way nothing else I’ve seen in a school year does for kind of low but not catastrophically low reading level kids and gets them to study.
Maybe there’s something better but that has an assume a can opener problem.
NYT might have written about this but I had no idea. It would be cool if this narrative of "do what works no matter where it's done" could be used as a unifying concept for the country.
I was unlucky in that I was not taught to read phonetically, but by the gestalt method.
The idea of recognizing whole words at once seemed like a great shortcut to comprehension, but it's more like a speed bump in practice. It slows you down, and makes you double-check the identity of each word before moving on. It's also terrible for understanding standard spellings. The gestalt method is actually "the hard way" of learning to read, although I've found that it does improve comprehension quality — not because of what gestalt teaches intrinsically, but because of what the many countermeasures students need to practice in order to compensate for the flaws of gestalt, teach.
So ok, we are Californians, we want to influence our local district to copy these measures. What obstacles need to be overcome? Is there a statewide statute that needs amendment to allow third grade retention, for example? Or could a reform school board slate, supported by a parent advocacy group and able to hire a like minded superintendent, just push this through in a district in a couple of years?
Yes, I know statewide support and state level accountability are necessary to preserve gains over the longer term. But one has to start somewhere, and a major CA urban school district like OUSD or SFUSD doing this and seeing it work would go a long way to build the political coalition necessary at the state level.
I do think the "move to MS for the better schools" thing, if you meant it at all seriously, is a bit off base. A parent determined enough to make such a move is likely determined enough to make sure their kid reads well regardless of where they go to school-- and there are many many other things one might prefer about CA schools, e.g. that they teach fact-based history of the Civil War and provide comprehensive non-moralizing sex education.
Good piece Kelsey, but I think you missed an opportunity to discuss the role that luxury beliefs about critical pedagogy have played in curricular decisions in democratic districts. This is an especially conspicuous omission given the Argument's mission to defend philosophical liberalism.
Critical pedagogies began with Paolo Freire, who is one of the most commonly-assigned authors on education syllabi according to the open syllabus project. There is a direct line from Freire's rejection of the "banking model" of education where teachers "deposit" knowledge into students minds, to the rejection of things like phonics and rule-based approaches to math instruction.
So you're right that, until recently, "local school boards have been more interested in issues around equity than measurably improving learning outcomes" — but that's not just been an administrative focus. Large swathes of the teacher-education apparatus have been captured by the disciples of Freire and have rejected evidence-based methodologies as oppressive and inegalitarian. The shift away from phonics was politically motivated, not empirically motivated. Here's Freire in "The Importance of the Act of Reading" —
"First, I would like to reaffirm that I always saw teaching adults to read and write as a political act, an act of knowledge, and therefore as a creative act. I would find it impossible to be engaged in a work of mechanically memorizing vowel sounds, like in the exercises ba-be-bi-bo-bu, la-le-li-lo-lu. Nor could I reduce learning to read and write merely to learning words, syllables, or letters, a process of teaching in which the teacher fills the supposedly empty heads of the learners with his or her words. On the contrary, the student is the subject of the process of learning to read and write as an act of knowing and a creative act. The fact that he or she needs the teacher’s help, as in the pedagogical situation, does not mean that the teacher’s help annuls the student’s creativity and responsibility for constructing his or her own written language and reading this language."
Ken Goodman's cueing method, originally developed in the late 60's may have given teachers an apparent empirical crutch for their political beliefs (even though the science turned out to be bunk), but even this was shot through with controversial politics — as Emily Hanford revealed when she interviewed him in 2019. Ken Goodman appears unwilling to countenance a distinction between skilled and unskilled readers "because of the value judgment that implies." And that's from the "scientist" behind non-phonics pedagogy y'all!
Belief in the value of these pedagogies is a Luxury Belief because most folks who hold these views can afford to ensure their own kids get a good education regardless. They'll be reading with them outside school, they'll have rich pre-K vocabularies, they'll have tutors, etc. The kids who end up suffering are the ones in democratic districts whose parents _aren't_ members of the educated elite. Symbolic capitalists get to wrap themselves in the comfort that their districts are progressive and woke, when in fact those very pedagogies actually hurt the poor and marginalized.
You just fundamentally cannot understand the broader story here until you understand why we stopped teaching phonics. And when you start digging in to that story, you'll find many footnotes to Freire. Egalitarian liberals need to understand this tradition and critically evaluate how much of a role it ought to play in our educational institutions. It's just fundamentally illiberal and does more harm than good.
I have an incredibly low opinion of really most of the field of education research and certainly of all this stuff, and in my preferred world we'd dramatically alter the whole field. But I think I disagree that reform needs to start here. You can start with training teachers on what works, and that will help because most teachers really do want to use effective strategies. A reckoning for the liars and those who pushed theories that made them money or served their ideological gains at the expense of students would be satisfying, but it will not itself teach kids to read and I don't think it's even on the critical path to doing so.
Good — but my concern is that there will be many cases where "what works" is also regarded as "problematic" such that merely exposing teachers to what works won't always suffice for the reform we want.
We'll see just how often that happens, but some of the pushback against the reintroduction of phonics seems to bear that pattern out. I hope these cases are rare.
But when they do occur, I am less optimistic than you are that simply leaning into "what works" will suffice without addressing the beliefs that led us to reject pedagogical methods because they didn't sit well with our politics. That's why I think educational reform just won't be successful unless it pairs science with critique. I agree it doesn't need to start with critique — just that it must come alongside.
I try only to comment when I have something worthwhile to say, but here I wanted to comment only to say that I thought the article was truly excellent.
This is a good critique of relatively wealthy states, whose students are failing. Most of them are failing — they are failing to master text-based communication skills.
What this is not is an urgently needed analysis of how well today's students are reading and writing, compared with how well students have done with reading and writing, in the past.
While its helpful to be reminded that strict enforcement of a protocol always assists the achievement of the goals of that protocol — any protocol — it would be perhaps even more helpful to discuss the merits of today's educational protocols, compared with the educational protocols of previous generations, along with the methods in use today to accomplish the objectives of these protocols, compared with the methods of the past.
What are we asking our kids to do, today? We're teaching them a narrowly-defined curriculum, designed to enable them to pass the tests we want them to pass; to learn the things we want them to learn; to become the adults we want them to become. This is different than teaching kids *how* to learn, and helping them to learn how to learn. And yet, so many schools are having so much trouble achieving even this narrow objective? Why? Is the objective perhaps too narrow? Is it not ambitious enough?
Why has proficiency in text-based communication skills particularly, become so rare? This is a sociological question. Another sociological question is why has the importance of text communication has become so diminished in our lives, and in the lives of young students?
Why are we not testing kids on their proficiency in visual or audio/visual communication, for example? It would be interesting to learn just how much young students' communication skills have not simply retreated from proficiency in text, as they have migrated toward other forms of communication which, for debatable sociological reasons, have become more widely used?
How important is proficiency in text, compared with proficiency in audio/video/images, or in speaking or performance? Are today's students really good at speaking? Do they communicate well in their presentations and personal interactions?
A follow-up essay may be needed to expand the topic a bit…
I teach 3rd grade in a southern state and we’ve had 3rd grade retention forever and I really don’t understand why it’s only us.
If you make it 3rd grade and can’t read there’s not that much magic we can do in one year and it’s a lot to ask in Two. We have a ton of comprehension standards to teach too. Like why not just do this every year or every other instead of a one time fear laden anti-jubilee. But if you were going to do it first seems to me much more pivotal as every grade after that significantly weights read to learn over learn to read more.
Even if it is stressful I kind of like the focusing it does for everyone and with most family’s it becomes an us against the test dynamic since my opinion doesn’t really matter.
The notion that students who can't read or write shouldn't be allowed to advance through school sounds merciless, but it's important I think — it's important unless you don't believe that kids need to learn how to communicate with text… which is what I *do* believe.
…
What if there were a *persistent* threat of retention, not only in the 3rd grade, but in every primary school grade? Would the effects of this threat focus the efforts of students during their entire educations?
There is a real debate as to whether retention in 4th grade actually leads to durable gains into 8th and 12th grade. If the gains don’t persist then you are spending 7% more to educate the retained kids for no real reason.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-does-research-say-about-grade-retention-a-few-key-studies-to-know/2022/11
A lot of these studies seem focused on “does retention help the kids who are held back” and not “does a culture of holding kids back mean that teachers get marginal students over the line, so they master reading by 3rd grade”
And the racial disparity concerns seem aimed in the wrong direction. The problem isn’t that too many black kids are held back, it’s that too many black kids aren’t being taught to read (putting them in danger of retention)
Agreed on the racial disparity thing. But if the main benefit of retention is to incentivize better focus and improved performance for non retained students, there has to be a better and cheaper way to do that.
I would also say the Mississippi 8th grade reading scores which have improved a lot but are still below the national average, are consistent with a temporary bump from 3rd/4th grade retention which fades over time.
I think Mississippi has done a lot of good work but I really doubt they have gone from 49th to 7th in 10 years.
I mean I’d love to read all about it but it genuinely lights a fire under family’s in a way nothing else I’ve seen in a school year does for kind of low but not catastrophically low reading level kids and gets them to study.
Maybe there’s something better but that has an assume a can opener problem.
NYT might have written about this but I had no idea. It would be cool if this narrative of "do what works no matter where it's done" could be used as a unifying concept for the country.
I constantly run into people who have no idea!! You really need constant relentless coverage to make something something everyone has heard about.
I was lucky enough to be in the room for my 3 years older sister’s phonics tapes and was reading by preschool 🙂
I was unlucky in that I was not taught to read phonetically, but by the gestalt method.
The idea of recognizing whole words at once seemed like a great shortcut to comprehension, but it's more like a speed bump in practice. It slows you down, and makes you double-check the identity of each word before moving on. It's also terrible for understanding standard spellings. The gestalt method is actually "the hard way" of learning to read, although I've found that it does improve comprehension quality — not because of what gestalt teaches intrinsically, but because of what the many countermeasures students need to practice in order to compensate for the flaws of gestalt, teach.
So ok, we are Californians, we want to influence our local district to copy these measures. What obstacles need to be overcome? Is there a statewide statute that needs amendment to allow third grade retention, for example? Or could a reform school board slate, supported by a parent advocacy group and able to hire a like minded superintendent, just push this through in a district in a couple of years?
Yes, I know statewide support and state level accountability are necessary to preserve gains over the longer term. But one has to start somewhere, and a major CA urban school district like OUSD or SFUSD doing this and seeing it work would go a long way to build the political coalition necessary at the state level.
I do think the "move to MS for the better schools" thing, if you meant it at all seriously, is a bit off base. A parent determined enough to make such a move is likely determined enough to make sure their kid reads well regardless of where they go to school-- and there are many many other things one might prefer about CA schools, e.g. that they teach fact-based history of the Civil War and provide comprehensive non-moralizing sex education.
Good piece Kelsey, but I think you missed an opportunity to discuss the role that luxury beliefs about critical pedagogy have played in curricular decisions in democratic districts. This is an especially conspicuous omission given the Argument's mission to defend philosophical liberalism.
Critical pedagogies began with Paolo Freire, who is one of the most commonly-assigned authors on education syllabi according to the open syllabus project. There is a direct line from Freire's rejection of the "banking model" of education where teachers "deposit" knowledge into students minds, to the rejection of things like phonics and rule-based approaches to math instruction.
So you're right that, until recently, "local school boards have been more interested in issues around equity than measurably improving learning outcomes" — but that's not just been an administrative focus. Large swathes of the teacher-education apparatus have been captured by the disciples of Freire and have rejected evidence-based methodologies as oppressive and inegalitarian. The shift away from phonics was politically motivated, not empirically motivated. Here's Freire in "The Importance of the Act of Reading" —
"First, I would like to reaffirm that I always saw teaching adults to read and write as a political act, an act of knowledge, and therefore as a creative act. I would find it impossible to be engaged in a work of mechanically memorizing vowel sounds, like in the exercises ba-be-bi-bo-bu, la-le-li-lo-lu. Nor could I reduce learning to read and write merely to learning words, syllables, or letters, a process of teaching in which the teacher fills the supposedly empty heads of the learners with his or her words. On the contrary, the student is the subject of the process of learning to read and write as an act of knowing and a creative act. The fact that he or she needs the teacher’s help, as in the pedagogical situation, does not mean that the teacher’s help annuls the student’s creativity and responsibility for constructing his or her own written language and reading this language."
Ken Goodman's cueing method, originally developed in the late 60's may have given teachers an apparent empirical crutch for their political beliefs (even though the science turned out to be bunk), but even this was shot through with controversial politics — as Emily Hanford revealed when she interviewed him in 2019. Ken Goodman appears unwilling to countenance a distinction between skilled and unskilled readers "because of the value judgment that implies." And that's from the "scientist" behind non-phonics pedagogy y'all!
Belief in the value of these pedagogies is a Luxury Belief because most folks who hold these views can afford to ensure their own kids get a good education regardless. They'll be reading with them outside school, they'll have rich pre-K vocabularies, they'll have tutors, etc. The kids who end up suffering are the ones in democratic districts whose parents _aren't_ members of the educated elite. Symbolic capitalists get to wrap themselves in the comfort that their districts are progressive and woke, when in fact those very pedagogies actually hurt the poor and marginalized.
You just fundamentally cannot understand the broader story here until you understand why we stopped teaching phonics. And when you start digging in to that story, you'll find many footnotes to Freire. Egalitarian liberals need to understand this tradition and critically evaluate how much of a role it ought to play in our educational institutions. It's just fundamentally illiberal and does more harm than good.
I have an incredibly low opinion of really most of the field of education research and certainly of all this stuff, and in my preferred world we'd dramatically alter the whole field. But I think I disagree that reform needs to start here. You can start with training teachers on what works, and that will help because most teachers really do want to use effective strategies. A reckoning for the liars and those who pushed theories that made them money or served their ideological gains at the expense of students would be satisfying, but it will not itself teach kids to read and I don't think it's even on the critical path to doing so.
Good — but my concern is that there will be many cases where "what works" is also regarded as "problematic" such that merely exposing teachers to what works won't always suffice for the reform we want.
We'll see just how often that happens, but some of the pushback against the reintroduction of phonics seems to bear that pattern out. I hope these cases are rare.
But when they do occur, I am less optimistic than you are that simply leaning into "what works" will suffice without addressing the beliefs that led us to reject pedagogical methods because they didn't sit well with our politics. That's why I think educational reform just won't be successful unless it pairs science with critique. I agree it doesn't need to start with critique — just that it must come alongside.
I try only to comment when I have something worthwhile to say, but here I wanted to comment only to say that I thought the article was truly excellent.
This is a good critique of relatively wealthy states, whose students are failing. Most of them are failing — they are failing to master text-based communication skills.
What this is not is an urgently needed analysis of how well today's students are reading and writing, compared with how well students have done with reading and writing, in the past.
While its helpful to be reminded that strict enforcement of a protocol always assists the achievement of the goals of that protocol — any protocol — it would be perhaps even more helpful to discuss the merits of today's educational protocols, compared with the educational protocols of previous generations, along with the methods in use today to accomplish the objectives of these protocols, compared with the methods of the past.
What are we asking our kids to do, today? We're teaching them a narrowly-defined curriculum, designed to enable them to pass the tests we want them to pass; to learn the things we want them to learn; to become the adults we want them to become. This is different than teaching kids *how* to learn, and helping them to learn how to learn. And yet, so many schools are having so much trouble achieving even this narrow objective? Why? Is the objective perhaps too narrow? Is it not ambitious enough?
Why has proficiency in text-based communication skills particularly, become so rare? This is a sociological question. Another sociological question is why has the importance of text communication has become so diminished in our lives, and in the lives of young students?
Why are we not testing kids on their proficiency in visual or audio/visual communication, for example? It would be interesting to learn just how much young students' communication skills have not simply retreated from proficiency in text, as they have migrated toward other forms of communication which, for debatable sociological reasons, have become more widely used?
How important is proficiency in text, compared with proficiency in audio/video/images, or in speaking or performance? Are today's students really good at speaking? Do they communicate well in their presentations and personal interactions?
A follow-up essay may be needed to expand the topic a bit…