‘There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Reading Instruction'

The Atlantic

18-02-2025

Teaching Lucy
In the December 2024 issue, Helen Lewis wrote about how one woman became the scapegoat for America's literacy crisis.
A heartfelt thank-you to Helen Lewis for her reporting on Lucy Calkins and the most recent phase of the 'reading wars.' As a career English teacher whose mother was also a career English teacher, I have had a front-row seat to the reading wars for decades. Emily Hanford's Sold a Story podcast was particularly frustrating to me for its oversimplification of Calkins's reading workshop and its all-too-typical sidelining of teachers' voices. Wise educators have known for a very long time that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reading instruction; effective teachers combine phonics with other strategies that help develop a student's identity as a reader. It is shocking to none of us that the solution is 'both, and' and not 'either/or.' Lewis's article was a breath of fresh air. Calkins is by no means flawless, but her Units of Study remain some of the most comprehensive and useful language-arts curricula out there in a sea of flashy, colorful nonsense.
San Rafael, Calif.
Helen Lewis's interesting article on Lucy Calkins sadly missed some of the substance behind the 'phonics'–versus–'whole language' debate. Beginning-reading teachers immediately encounter a reality Lewis doesn't mention: Although many other languages are highly phonetic, English is not, so an approach that relies mostly on teaching the sounds of letters can leave children confused and frustrated.
In fact, some of the most common English words are nonphonetic. For example, the words to and do do not rhyme with so or go. One and gone don't rhyme either. And why are to, too, and two all pronounced the same? Only context and experience with real texts can help readers learn which pronunciation is appropriate.
Programs that rely mostly on phonics impose reading materials on children that tend to exclude nonphonetic words in order to make the text 'decodable.' That sounds great in theory, but nonphonetic words are so common in English that when you leave them out, the resulting texts are nonsensical. Many sound so stupid that they can turn kids off from reading.
This is what Calkins was trying to avoid. This inherent challenge in teaching reading in English is studiously ignored by the Sold a Story podcast. The nature of the English language makes a balanced approach combining phonics and normal texts the most sensible strategy for teaching reading.
When I was in grad school at Columbia's Teachers College, I worked as a student teacher at P.S. 87 in Manhattan, a so-called Lucy school. I was placed in a kindergarten class and a fourth-grade class. It was apparent to me that a significant number of children were not benefiting from the curricula and needed phonics to launch them into reading. To have continued with Calkins's method of instruction alone would have been ludicrous. You have to tailor your technique to the needs of each student.
Although some students may not need phonics instruction and may even be bored by it, others need it to succeed academically. Teachers should have the independence to make decisions about which children will benefit from which type of instruction and how much instruction they will need. It will vary from student to student—and teachers and supervisors need to be trained to recognize that and make the appropriate educational decisions.
I began my teaching career in 1976. I was a kindergarten teacher, trained well in my California district, and I've watched the conflicts over reading and writing instruction ever since. At some point in my teaching journey, I learned about Lucy Calkins. I loved what she had to say. I know two things are true: Lucy Calkins has been a great contributor to the knowledge of how to teach literacy, and many of us have asked too much of her. Teachers cannot take a blanket approach to teaching literacy. Calkins provided many good things over her long career, even if she did not provide everything, and for that I am grateful. Educators and administrators should be learners, too, who understand the complexity of teaching reading. Shame on those who left Calkins hanging out to dry.
I appreciated Helen Lewis's article about Lucy Calkins because it added some much-needed nuance to the conversation about reading instruction in American schools. I am a former teacher, and I attended Lucy Calkins's trainings at Columbia. But I've learned a lot since then.
Our education system suffers from several problems that have made it possible for flawed instructional methods to achieve wide reach. Many states and districts push teachers to adopt curricular programs with 'fidelity'—that is, without ever questioning them. Even in schools where teachers have a little more freedom, they're rarely given the tools or time to evaluate the quality of instructional methods themselves. I remember being handed Calkins's reading curriculum in my third year of teaching, and I wondered about the research that undergirded its methods. But the curriculum books didn't provide much information. I didn't know where else to look, and even if I had known where to find the facts, I didn't have time to do research on my own, because I had just three days to set up my new classroom.
Ask any veteran educator, and they will tell you that our school systems have a knack for repeating the same mistakes. I worry that the new 'science of reading' movement is being co-opted by curriculum publishers, professional-development providers, and 'experts' who are seeking profits by promoting a silver bullet—just as they have with other en vogue methods in the past. My kids' school district just adopted a new curriculum that allegedly reflects the 'science of reading,' but it seems like the same type of mediocre curricula that have been peddled to big school systems for decades.
If we really want research-based instruction in our schools, we have to be humble about what we know and don't know about effective reading instruction. We have to be wary of anyone pushing quick fixes, and we need to teach teachers how to be critical consumers of research and users of curricula. Educators can't do this alone: We need more nuanced reporting like Lewis's so that all of us—educators, parents, citizens—can better understand the problems we face and how we might solve them.
Jennie Herriot-Hatfield
San Francisco, Calif.
Helen Lewis replies:
I loved reading these responses, because the spread of opinions echoed what I heard while doing my reporting: that people with significant expertise can come to wildly divergent conclusions about the roots of America's 'reading crisis.' What first attracted me to this story was the idea that bad outcomes can happen without anyone involved having bad intentions. Debates over curricula make sense only in the wider context of American education— ever-changing standards, racial and class disparities, a sometimes chaotic bureaucracy, politicized decisions at the state level. Also, Nick Estes is entirely right to point out that English is very irregular. For a while, Finland's strong performance in reading was attributed partly to its strongly phonetic language. But in the past few years, that country's reading scores have fallen precipitously—and no one can really say what's changed. A good reminder that this subject demands caution and humility.
Behind the Cover
In this month's cover story, ' Stuck In Place,' Yoni Appelbaum explores why Americans, once the most mobile people on the planet, have become less and less apt to move to new homes in new places over the past 50 years. The decline in geographic mobility, he argues, is the most important social change of the past half century, shaping our politics, our culture, and how we relate to one another. For our cover image, the artist Javier Jaén designed an abandoned moving truck resting on concrete blocks, symbolizing a nation that has stopped moving to seek new opportunities.
— Liz Hart, Art Director
Corrections
'The Loyalist' originally stated that Kash Patel did not include the events of October 30, 2020, in his book. In fact, Patel did include a brief narrative of events for that day. 'Modi's Failure' originally stated that Narendra Modi was formerly the governor of Gujarat. In fact, Modi was chief minister.