Both/And: Literacy Beyond the Headlines

It's 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning at Cedar Elementary. Literacy professor and advocate Dr. Kristi Tamte sits at a small table surrounded by five fourth-grade students, each holding a copy of Falcons Nest on Skyscrapers (Priscilla Belz Jenkins, 1996). Ms. Peterson,* the school’s reading specialist, sits with the group as well.

Each of these students can competently open any book in their classroom and read the words on the page. They’ve got their phonics skills down. But their reading scores still lag well behind the majority of their classmates.

How could that be possible? 

"You have students who read with accuracy and fluency," explains Dr. Tamte, "and after reading a text you ask them: 'What was that about?' They struggle to talk about what happened in the story."

Today, and for the next twenty lessons with these fourth graders, Tamte is working with the school reading specialist to encourage the students to think aloud as they read. Instead of simply asking comprehension questions at the end of the text, Tamte wants to tease out exactly where each student gets stuck. 

James, a bright-eyed and energetic boy, takes his turn: 

"The DDT made the peregrine’s eggshells too thin. When the mother falcons sat on them, they broke. No baby falcons, or ­eyases, could hatch."

"What does the word eyases mean?" Tamte asks the boy.

James taps his heels on the floor. He looks back at the page. Then shrugs. "I don’t know," he admits. 

"Try rereading this sentence and use clues in the sentence to help you think about what the word eyases means," Tamte encourages.

James reads the section again, and Tamte notices that he doesn’t pause at the comma after falcons. 

"Ok, James, this time listen to me read and watch how I read with both commas: 'No baby falcon, or eyases, could hatch.' What do you think the word eyases means?"

James perks up. "It means a baby falcon?"

"Yes!"

In this case, James didn’t recognize how the comma impacted the meaning of the text. As they continue, Tamte periodically pauses and asks other students questions: What are you thinking at this point in the text? What brought you to that conclusion? 

Some students struggle to attach what they're reading to the big idea of the text. Others can't quite hold an idea from the previous sentence in mind and integrate it with the next sentence. Still others become distracted by irrelevant background knowledge.

"What I love about this practice is that you observe the real reading students are doing and you see their processes," says Tamte.

The educators she mentored through this process agree.

"[This method has] given me the best insight I’ve had at where each student’s comprehension is breaking down," says one specialist. "Instead of just saying they don’t get it, or it is too hard...we as the instructors know exactly what pieces of the process they are missing.

"I love this!" shared another specialist. "I'm already starting to use this with other groups of students."

These are the moments Tamte loves: When students and teachers partner together to untangle snags in the reading process, opening up new paths to learning.

"I love seeing the joy that can be in a classroom. Maybe it's that the kids loved a story, or they're excited about what they just learned, or they gained a sense of pride in their accomplishments...it's so fun to see."

"I love seeing the joy that can be in a classroom."

Tamte is well aware that "joy" is not the first word many U.S. parents think of when one brings up the topic of literacy today. Bombarded by billboards, news blurbs, and social media alerts pointing to a reading crisis, many parents wonder just what their children are learning in school. 

"It’s ‘Alarming’: Children Are Severely Behind in Reading" warned The New York Times in March of 2022. 

"Only about 33% of fourth graders can read proficiently," NBC News announced in September of 2023.

Joining the chorus, Forbes posted "A Call to Action for District Leaders" to address the literacy crisis in the spring of 2024.

And, of course, there is the podcast that sparked a myriad of curriculum changes, new laws, and ignited reading panic among parents: Sold A Story.

As the news outlets stumbled over one another to get the word out to parents, instituting what has come to be known as a Science of Reading (SoR) approach rose to top priority for many state legislatures. 

Across the nation schools began to abandon entire curricula and years worth of work in an effort to show compliance with new laws and in hopes of improving student outcomes.

Tamte, however, saw an opportunity for a more nuanced approach. 

Tamte, however, saw an opportunity for a more nuanced approach.

"I think phonics instruction and phonological awareness is important and it's important for schools to provide curriculum in that area. However, let’s not neglect all of the other research." 

Beware the Pendulum

At this point it might help to know that Tamte has over thirty years' experience in the field of education. The author of numerous research projects and papers in the literacy arena, empowering children to read through evidence-based methods is her passion. 

"Literacy is constantly evolving. While some things are foundational, there is also shifting that happens as the field identifies new needs and there are new approaches and new research," she shares.

When the Science of Reading movement came to Minnesota, Tamte was invited to be on a committee of literacy leaders tasked with influencing teacher education for reading instruction in MN.

What she saw was, she felt, an overcorrection to poorly represented data.

What she saw was, she felt, an overcorrection to poorly represented data.

"We identified needs, such as the need to strengthen our support for kids with dyslexia and to make sure we have foundational literacy skills for early elementary-aged students," she says. Both of these were necessary.

 However, SoR, with its heavy emphasis on phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency quickly became seen as the simple panacea to a broad and complex issue.

"Children who experience difficulty with reading differ in their challenges," says Tamte.

Decades of research demonstrates that SoR methods can fall short, for example, with students like the ones at the beginning of this article. 

"They just read with accuracy but you ask them 'what was the text about?' And they don't know." And yet, in some instances, phonics-heavy programs now take the lead as "solutions" for these same students.

Similarly, Tamte worries about students who speak English as a second language or those struggling with executive function reading hurdles: each of these challenges needs specific interventions that are typically not well addressed by SoR methods.

As SoR made its way into Minnesota schools, Tamte noticed that her student teachers and the mentors they shadowed were living out these concerns in real time.

During a 2022 research project she met with multiple teachers who expressed their frustration that this overly simplistic, phonetic view of reading didn't go far enough. One teacher said that it was "like dribbling the basketball when you need to play the game." Knowing how to dribble is essential, but it is only one aspect of playing basketball.

Listening to Tamte speak about this topic you can hear the passion in her voice. Not passion for a specific curriculum or framework or policy. Her passion is for students and the teachers charged with training them in the one academic tool that is foundational to all future learning. 

Her passion is for students and the teachers charged with training them in the one academic tool that is foundational to all future learning.

"If you look at the research, there's just not a magic curriculum." Again: She supports phonics instruction, but not at the expense of other methods that are critical to comprehension and deep reading. "When reading instruction becomes political, it often swings too far for certain components of reading at the expense of other components," Tamte says.

A Literacy Hail Mary

Hoping to bring greater nuance to proposed SoR legislation in Minnesota, Tamte and a group of local literacy professors got to work.

In the early months of 2023, they scheduled meetings with members of the legislature, the Commissioner of Education, the Assistant Commissioner of Education, the Minnesota Dyslexia Specialist, the Minnesota Literacy Specialist, and the author of the Read Act. 

"This was really a last-ditch effort," Tamte admits. It was apparent that the people being heard were those with political power, money, and who tended to have a narrow views of the research.

Misunderstanding the Research

Here is where we circle back to those noisy headlines.

"I'm concerned about misleading information about our children's reading scores," says Tamte. "Our scores were higher before the Science of Reading movement and dyslexia legislation; they have dropped since."

Our scores were higher before the Science of Reading movement and dyslexia legislation; they have dropped since.

Even with that drop, she says, students today perform at a similar level of achievement as their parents did a generation ago. 

"When the billboards, special interest groups, and podcasts were spreading that fear, our reading scores were­­—and continue to be—comparable with countries like Sweden, England, Finland, Japan, and Australia."^,

But what about the claim that only 33% of fourth graders in the United States can read proficiently?

Here the NAEP's label of "proficient" muddies the waters.

The NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) gives this explanation for the "proficient" level: "Students...demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP "proficient" achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency." 

Unfortunately, the news media often equates "proficient" with performing at grade-level. 

In reality, many literacy professionals point out that the NAEP's "Basic" rating is much closer to the expected at-grade-level reading for students.

Peggy Carr, associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the federal agency that oversees NAEP, affirms that while not fully synonymous with grade-level reading the NAEP's "basic" scores are a much more accurate correlation.

As for the claim that teachers are encouraging students to simply "guess" at words instead of teaching phonics? Tamte wonders if this practice is as widespread as has been proclaimed.

"This [assertion] is not true for my classes nor for any of my literacy professor friends. At SCSU, undergraduate students take four literacy methods classes, and graduate students in the Reading Specialist program take six literacy methods classes. These classes have always included phonemic awareness and phonics, and have never included the practice of telling kids to just guess at words."

Unfortunately, such misrepresentations are being used to push lopsided legislation.

Unfortunately, such misrepresentations are being used to push lopsided legislation.

"My wish is for legislators and the public to have access to a deeper conversation about literacy. I think that would involve the various players collaborating together."

Thirty Years of Work in Three Minutes

Standing before the Senate Educational Policy Committee, Tamte knew she was swimming against the popular tide. She attempted to sum up years of research and experience, concluding:

"Requiring this Science of

Reading approach for all children...will harm children who do not need [this specific approach]. To improve reading achievement in Minnesota we must begin with a needs analysis to understand why children are not meeting expectations."

As one of her colleagues then pointed out: applying an SoR approach to all students is like giving "everyone...the same prescription for glasses or contact lenses" when they fail to pass vision screening.

It's like giving the same glasses prescription to everyone when they fail to pass a vision screening.

As Tamte and her colleagues competed with special interest groups for the ears of policy makers, they discovered their professional experience and volumes of data being drowned out by the noise of slick presentations and compelling stories.

Ultimately, on May 24, 2023 the READ Act was signed into legislation, without the requested adjustments to add the nuance that many literacy professionals were calling for. 

So...is There a Reading Crisis?

The short answer is: It depends. What constitutes a crisis?

"When we look across subjects for our Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments...our reading scores are higher than math and science. If we have a reading crisis, then we also have a crisis in math and science," says Tamte.

That doesn't mean she thinks we should let things lie. Numbers for under-resourced populations lag. There are still students who don't read at grade level. "We are continually working to improve children's literacy development," she says.

Tamte points out that Covid and poverty are two huge factors impacting nation-wide literacy. 

Tamte points out that Covid and poverty are two huge factors impacting nation-wide literacy. 

"Poverty is a stronger indicator for how students score on literacy assessments than any particular curriculum or instructional approach." Tamte says that as a teacher and as a Christ-follower watching young students grapple with poverty is heartbreaking.

During her research teachers shared that many of their low-scoring students faced significant life events that the well-performing students didn't:

"I was working with a kindergartner," shared one teacher. "He was really fidgety. I finally got him to talk about letter sounds. He got to the fifth letter, and he looked at me and said, 'Do you have shelter?' He had lost his home...how can we expect him to care about a letter sound test right now?"

Students in the top 75^th percentile for reading have actually seen their scores go up since the 1990s, whereas scores for students in the bottom 25^th percentile keep dropping. Many of those students live in unstable situations.

Yes, Tamte agrees, there are struggles on numerous levels. In order to truly help students succeed, though, we must avoid the siren call of the simple solution.

There is Hope

For her part, Tamte was disappointed with the decision at the legislature but not crushed.

"I observe a lot of classroom instruction, and I'm inspired by the depth of understanding in our teachers." 

Since this legislation, Tamte has watched creative teachers find ways to meet the needs of their students.

Nadia, a student teacher, noticed that in one group student engagement with reading was especially low. She also noticed that none of the books available included children that looked or lived like the many East African students in the room. Nadia built a lesson around a book that included East African girls. The response was immediate, with the young students enthusiastically raising their hands and engaged in a way that she had not seen before.

This provided a doorway for Nadia to catch the interest of the students while also helping them build  foundational skills.

  Another teacher, Tina, used the newly required curriculum but also prioritized time to group students by strengths and needs. She found high interest books for each group and then worked with them by group on missing comprehension skills. 

"I have watched these teachers just be masterful at all the different things they have to do in the classroom. I want to thank them for the work they do every day," Tamte says.

She encourages teachers to take the long view, remembering why they went into teaching in the first place.

"Teaching is one of the most rewarding jobs there is. The impact that teachers have on their students can be pretty profound." Even more, she realizes, this is a special space to honoring Jesus' call to "serve the least of these." 

"It's a job for people who really value doing good in the world." 

 

*Some names and details have been changed for privacy.

** This scene is adapted from Dr. Tamte's paper on verbal protocols: Tamte Bergeson, Kristi. "Reading Specialists Use Verbal Protocols as a Formative Assessment Tool." The Reading Teacher, vol. 73, no. 2, Sept.–Oct. 2019, pp. 185–193.

 

1. Rosheim, K. M., & Tamte, K. G. (2022). Impact of policy on literacy specialists’ work. Reading Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2022.2126046

2. National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). Long-term trend assessments. In The Nation's Report Card. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ltt/

3. Newkirk, T. (2024, May 14). The broken logic of "Sold a Story": A personal response to "The science of reading". Literacy Research Commons. https://literacyresearchcommons.org/resources/

4. National Center for Education Statistics. (2023). PIRLS 2021 U.S. highlights web report (NCES 2023–054). U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pirls/pirls2021/index.asp

5. Khazan, O. (2018, April 12). National testing: What does it mean for a student to be "proficient"? The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2018/0412/National-testing-What-does-it-mean-for-a-student-to-be-proficient

6. Rosheim, Kay. Testimony before the Minnesota House Education Policy Committee. Minnesota House of Representatives, 28 Feb. 2023, https://www.house.mn.gov/comm/docs/dHC-UhyaAkiEsI3h7f-xQA.pdf

7. https://rc.education.mn.gov/#assessmentsParticipation/orgId--999999000000__groupType--state__accountabilityFlg--FOC_NONE__test--allAccount__subject--M__year--trend__grade--all__p--3

8. Rosheim, K. M., & Tamte, K. G. (2022). Impact of policy on literacy specialists’ work. Reading Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2022.2126046