“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." - Maya Angelou
Below is a letter to the editor I sent to The Chronicle Herald regarding an opinion piece published on December 17, 2022.
Letter to the Editor - Chronicle Herald
Don't force children to read when they are not ready. December 17, 2022
I read this commentary with disappointment due to the continuing opinions of some people who say they are experts regarding the right of children to learn to read.
Nobody is trying to "pit" anyone against the "balanced literacy" or "whole language" method of teaching children to read. Those methods have been debunked as they do not teach many children to read effectively and have left millions of children struggling and often failing in school.
The people advocating for Structured Literacy and the Science of Reading are providing reading instruction methods that have been shown to be effective for about 95% of children.
A six-episode podcast by Emily Hanford and APM Reports came out on October 18, 2022, called Sold A Story. It was heartbreaking to hear parents describe what their children have gone through and continue to go through in their struggle to learn to read. Teachers tell of their experiences and anger when they realize they have been teaching children to read using ineffective and damaging instructional methods. So many children and their families have been failed by the flawed reading instruction methods used in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere.
It is not a small percentage of kids who do not respond well to whole language/balanced literacy instruction and will struggle with reading in early elementary school and beyond. The percentage of students with dyslexia is significantly higher than Ms. Hurd stated. Estimates range from a conservative 5% to as high as 20%, according to The International Dyslexia Association.
Dyslexia is not a "label." It is a neurologically-based condition that affects word-level reading accuracy, reading fluency, and spelling.
https://www.idaontario.com/about-dyslexia/
The most recent article in the Chronicle Herald on this subject was 'Children are struggling unnecessarily': N.S. reading curriculum failing too many kids, say parents, experts, on November 22, 2022.
This article has a link and information regarding the Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read Inquiry Report, released on February 28, 2022. This report was extensively researched and included two experts in dyslexia/learning disabilities, including Dr. Jamie Metsala of MSVU and Gail and the Stephen Jarislowsky Chair in Learning Disabilities, Professor of Education.
I can speak from direct experience on the struggles that far too many children have with reading skills. My daughter and husband are dyslexic, and I was a founding member of Decoding Dyslexia Ontario, which is a grassroots parent's advocacy group made up of parents of children with dyslexia in Ontario. Our group spearheaded the first in-person meeting with the Ontario Human Rights Commission with respect to some of the identified barriers, potentially systemic, to our children's Right to Read.
Our daughter had Reading Comprehension skills at the Grade 5 level when she was in Grade 10, and our former school board refused to provide any reading remediation for her. We recently settled a Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario complaint against the school board. No family should have to resort to legal action for their children to be able to read and succeed academically and in life.
The Inquiry Report was released on February 28, 2022. It was a difficult document to read after everything our family had gone through advocating for our daughter. The report was released with a 'trigger' warning for families like ours.
I challenge the writer and anyone else to read this report and the heartbreaking stories of the children and their parents and conclude that our children don't deserve the best reading instruction methods and education possible.
There are many studies that state the importance of early reading. For example:
"Early literacy and math skills have a significant impact on future academic achievement, with variance across gender, socioeconomic status, and English language proficiency. Studies indicate that these early literacy and math skills can impact future reading, math and content area success. Key early literacy predictors for school success include alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming of letters or numbers, rapid automatic naming of objects or colors, writing and phonological memory. Early counting and number sense skills can also predict reading, math, and science achievement in later years."
Page 6 - Early Skills and Predictors of Academic Success, November 2016, Hanover Research
"Reading proficiency matters." "One in Six Children Who Are Not Reading Proficiently in Third Grade Fail to Graduate from High School On Time, Four Times the Rate for Children with Proficient Third-Grade Reading Skills"
Annie E. Casey Foundation, January 1, 2012 - https://www.aecf.org/resources/double-jeopardy
"The findings provide evidence that students who met the provincial standards on the EQAO assessments in the early grades were more likely to be successful on the OSSLT in Grade 10 than those who did not. It is also important to note that many students who did not meet the standards in Grades 3 and 6 were successful on the OSSLT. Students with special education needs and English language learners were less likely than other students in the tracked sample to meet the standards in all grades. Achievement levels were much lower for students in applied or locally‐developed courses than for students in academic courses. For all groups, success in meeting the standards in later grades was strongly related to meeting the standard in earlier grades. Consequently, effort needs to be given to improving literacy achievement in elementary school so that students have an appropriate and strong foundation that will enable them to be more successful at meeting expected standards in secondary school.
EQAO Research - Tracking Student Achievement in Literacy over Time in English-Language Schools Grade 3 (2005) to Grade 6 (2008) to OSSLT (2012) Cohort
Phonics is not the only part of the Science of Reading/Structured Literacy. The Science of Reading is a comprehensive body of research that encompasses years of scientific knowledge, spans across many languages, and shares the contributions of experts from relevant disciplines such as education, special education, literacy, psychology, neurology, and more.
"Structured literacy (S.L.) approaches emphasize highly explicit and systematic teaching of all important components of literacy. These components include both foundational skills (e.g., decoding, spelling) and higher-level literacy skills (e.g., reading comprehension, written expression). S.L. also emphasizes oral language abilities essential to literacy development, including phonemic awareness, sensitivity to speech sounds in oral language, and the ability to manipulate those sounds."
Children will find joy in reading when they are able to read effectively. Providing interesting books and reading material will not help a student who cannot decode the words on the page and cannot comprehend what they are reading.
Leaving one of the most critical skills for life until the child "wants to read" is shocking to me. Willful ignorance, ineptitude, and egos have failed millions of children who deserve better than this.
