Turning the page on the reading wars
After decades of debate over the most effective way to teach literacy, educators are coalescing around a movement based on the “science of reading,” a body of research that is reshaping how kids are taught to read and write.
The past few years have seen a wave of reform in the field, with at least 40 states introducing legislation aimed at reversing the downward trend in reading scores nationwide. Laws centering the science of reading have included new licensure rules and auditing of teacher preparation programs, requirements for the use of state-approved curricula with increased emphasis on phonics, and mandates to use evidence-based screeners to identify students who may need additional support.
In California, a new law that begins taking effect next year will require the state board of education to adopt updated instructional materials based on the science of reading, and provides funding for professional development programs to equip teachers and administrators for the changes.
Rebecca Silverman, the Judy Koch Professor of Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), is a former elementary school teacher whose research focuses on language and literacy development. Her work sheds light on innovative ways to build literacy skills in early childhood and elementary school, especially for multilingual learners and students with learning differences, including the use of multimedia and educational technology to teach literacy. She leads the Language to Literacy Research Lab at the GSE and serves on the leadership team for the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR), an open-access platform for assessing foundational reading skills developed at Stanford and used in more than 1,000 schools nationwide.
Here, Silverman talks about the raft of new legislation based on the science of reading and what school districts need to do to navigate the shift.
Rebecca Silverman (Photo: Ryan Zhang)
The “science of reading” has become kind of a buzzword in education. What does the term actually mean?
Broadly, it’s the collection of research from a range of fields — including neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and education — that has shown us how kids learn to read and which kinds of instructional methods are most effective in supporting them.
Much of this research has been grounded in a theoretical model called the ‘simple view of reading,’ which has two main components. There’s decoding, which is the ability to connect sounds and letters in words, and there’s language comprehension, which is the ability to derive meaning from vocabulary, sentences, and discourse. Those two components together enable what we call reading comprehension, which is the ability to understand and make meaning out of text.
The science of reading shows us that both skill sets — decoding and language comprehension — are necessary and work together.
How is this a departure from the way we’ve been teaching kids to read?
In the 1990s, psychologist Michael Pressley introduced the concept of “balanced literacy,” which was meant to combine a focus on decoding and language comprehension, and many schools said they followed that approach. But the concept was operationalized in a way that focused more on the idea of learning to read through exposure to text and using context or pictures to figure out unfamiliar words instead of decoding them letter by letter.
There was an imbalance that started to occur in schools, where schools drifted more toward immersion in language, not attending as much to the explicit and direct instruction of phonics to teach decoding.
There are some kids who learn to decode through very minimal instruction on letters and sounds. But most kids need more support in learning that connection, and some kids — particularly kids who have dyslexia — need substantial instruction.
The body of research behind the science of reading has been developed over decades. Why the sudden surge of legislation citing it in the past few years?
States have been seeing declines in performance in reading for a lot of students. Many kids don't have the reading skills they need by third grade in order to move to upper elementary and middle school, where they need to read a lot more text independently.
There has also been a grassroots movement by families of kids struggling with decoding skills that ignited a lot of the ground-level advocacy for legislation. They have been working to highlight that their kids had not been provided with the support they really needed and trying to make sure that doesn’t happen for other kids.
A podcast series a few years ago called “Sold a Story” also brought a lot of attention to the science of reading, particularly the importance of systematic and explicit instruction for teaching decoding.
Now that technology has become so ubiquitous in the classroom, are there ways to use it to boost instruction based on the science of reading?
There are lots of digital learning products out there targeting literacy, but given the number of products on the market, relatively few have been studied for their effects. In 2024 I led a meta-analysis of research on edtech interventions for elementary students, and we found that in general, they are effective for supporting literacy. But it varied, depending on their features and the skills they targeted.
Among the programs that showed positive effects were those that provided adaptive instruction based on embedded assessments, those that had clear scope and sequences with skill building over time, and those that included opportunities for practice and feedback in isolation and in texts. Programs with multimedia tools, using things like voice-over, images or animations, and definitions or translations, can also be helpful to support students in learning to read and write.
Gamification, like a quest where a student can help guide the journey to reach a goal, can help engage students in learning, but too much gamification can be distracting.
As states pursue and adopt legislation based on the science of reading, what needs to happen to make sure these laws are effective?
Most states have English language arts standards with attention to both phonics and comprehension skills. Legislation can reinforce those and provide incentives and funding for teacher preparation, professional development, and curriculum materials that are aligned to those standards.
Like I said, there are kids who struggle and need more support for things like phonics, and legislation can help make sure there's appropriate funding and support mechanisms for kids who are struggling. We also need funding for additional staff in schools, because if you have a class of 25 kids and you need to focus on five of them who need additional phonics instruction, you need support to make sure all of the kids are engaged.
Importantly, we need to address both phonics and language comprehension, because many students also need support in learning how to understand advanced vocabulary and content.
What does it take to prepare teachers for this kind of shift in instruction?
We’re asking a lot of teachers, but we don't have a lot of time to prepare them. Teacher preparation programs are typically a year or two, and there’s so much to cover. Elementary school teachers are responsible not just for literacy but for math and science and social studies and everything else.
Having more infrastructure for continued professional learning is critical, so that teachers can continue to dive deeper and get feedback and support. We need funding for coaching and collaboration models where teachers can learn from each other.
We might need to rethink how we organize schools to ensure that teachers can do differentiated instruction to meet their kids’ needs. There are schools that are adopting a model where there's one teacher per grade level who really focuses on reading, and another who focuses on science, another on math, and they're working in more of a team instructional approach.
We've had a teacher shortage crisis since before the pandemic, but it's gotten worse. We want teachers to feel good about being in the profession and have a network of support. When you think about everything teachers are required to do, we need to make sure we’re supporting them enough that they know they're not in this alone.
Faculty mentioned in this article: Rebecca Silverman
