Russ on Reading: Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 4: Addressing School Boards, Legislatures and the Public

Russ on Reading: Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 4: Addressing School Boards, Legislatures and the Public

Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 4: Addressing School Boards, Legislatures and the Public

This series of posts has taken aim at the false Science of Reading (SOR) narrative that posits that the Simple View of Reading (SVR; Gough and Turner, 1986) is the scientifically proven best way to teach reading and all schools and all teachers should be adopting it. The first post in the series showed that SOR was far from settled science. The next three posts addressed ways to defeat this narrative by first focusing on the individual child, then talking to parents about the child, and then working with colleagues to improve everyone's breadth of understanding of the issues. In this post, I would like to address the need for teacher advocacy on the political level. Several respondents to the previous posts have noted that school boards and legislators are forcing the SOR instructional design on teachers through policy and legislation. Neither the school board members nor legislators are the professionals here. Neither is the journalist, Emily CONTINUE READING: Russ on Reading: Defeating the Science of Reading Narrative, Part 4: Addressing School Boards, Legislatures and the Public