The National Reading Panel: Still Misrepresented After All These Years | Live Long and Prosper

The National Reading Panel: Still Misrepresented After All These Years | Live Long and Prosper

The National Reading Panel: Still Misrepresented After All These Years

THE “READING WARS” AND THE NATIONAL READING PANEL

Jay Matthews is a long-time education writer for the Washington Post. Matthews has written about education for years though he has no training or experience in education other than as a student (BA in government, Harvard University, MA in East Asian regional studies). To be sure, he has studied and written about education extensively as a journalist, but that isn’t enough to replace actual classroom experience.

In the following article, Matthews mentions the National Reading Panel report. He implies that the low test scores of poor children is because their schools and teachers ignore the “proven” science of systematic phonics, which we will see, is not proven science after all.

The reading wars flare in Virginia. ‘I am sick to my stomach,’ one parent says.

It is one more sign of rising concern over failure to give all children the intensive phonics lessons proven many years ago to be essential to mastering reading.

Reading is becoming a lively issue in many parts of the country. California recently agreed in a lawsuit settlement to spend $53 million over three years in 75 low-performing elementary schools to improve reading instruction. Only about half of third-graders have met that state’s reading standards, part of a national failure to teach the vital skill to impoverished children.

It has hit hard in Virginia. Walker and two other leaders of the Arlington CONTINUE READING: The National Reading Panel: Still Misrepresented After All These Years | Live Long and Prosper