So Is It a Science? with Nancy E. Bailey
Education researcher and advocate Dr. Nancy E. Bailey shares why educators should be concerned about literacy programs that claim to be based on the "Science of Reading". While there is no consensus on what the term "Science of Reading" means, many reading programs use scripted lessons often only meeting the literacy needs of some students. In this conversation we discuss what to look for and what issues to be wary of in selecting and using literacy programs in schools.
Links from conversation
Study of reading program mentioned in conversation
Nancy’s author page on Goodreads
Transcript
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions and SEL Resource. I am Scott Lee. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and education organizations please visit our website: www.oncoursesolutions.net and reach out.
Our guest today is Dr. Nancy E. Bailey who is well known for her advocacy on behalf of public schools. Nancy researches, writes and advises on a variety of important issues for educators today including exceptional learners, literacy programming, equity, and school building safety among other issues. She has been an exceptional education teacher, a professor, a principal and held other administrative positions. We began our conversation discussing why Nancy believes quality public schools are so important.
First off, Nancy, thank you for joining us today on the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Nancy Bailey: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Scott Lee: So why don't you start off by sharing about your advocacy and why you think public schools are so important?
Nancy Bailey: Well, I was a teacher for many years.
I studied teaching. I believe public schools are, certainly one of the greatest democratic institutions we have today. They have the potential to bring children together. Children that have great diversity. So that they learn not just to tolerate one another, but to like one another and to grow up and to, I think, have a society that's Enriched through differences and hopefully with people who will get along, I think public schools, can bring children together and are open to all children.
Having been a special ed teacher, I learned back in the seventies, that it's, it's Truly remarkable to have schools open their doors to not to just all children, including children with disabilities. And, for two years I worked, with children who had the severest of disabilities ever. And we were trying to improve their quality of life.
We were trying to teach them how to, to eat. How to use the potty. How to, talk how to walk better, how to improve their physical, stability. And so, even here we're, we're working with children and providing hope to families to provide a quality of life to children and our public schools are about that.
And I think a lot of people, forget that. And I think. With vouchers, a lot of parents think, well, I need to have my children get a voucher to the school. I want them to go to. And first of all, that usually doesn't include choice because the school will do the choosing. And second of all, our public schools, we forget perhaps that they're not for our kids only.
Our kids are welcome to go to those schools. But public's education is for the collective, instruction of children so that we have, an educated populace so that all of us will benefit from, our young people. Um, and, um, you know, learning information that will help them eventually go into careers that they enjoy, that they feel good about, that they do well at, so that we will have, doctors who will, cure diseases, that will have researchers who will find new innovations, and, we'll have plumbers who will be able to fix our faucets, , for everyone, and, so our public schools are not going Just for our children, but for America's children, it's a super huge investment that brings us great returns that we should be incredibly proud of.
And instead of getting rid of these schools, instead of privatizing them, we need to focus our energy and our attention into making them just great hubs of learning for all children, no matter who they are, where they come from, what their cultural backgrounds are, what their disabilities are.
We need to take and help every child individually move forward. So that's my thinking about public education. I think it's. That important, it's very interesting and I feel compelled to, to support those schools and, and to write about them. So.
Scott Lee: So, all right. I wanted to talk a little bit more specifically about one particular reform initiative and that's “science of reading” and, and I just want to kind of parenthetically say that, it's probably about, uh, 10 years ago, I saw a post on social media about the “science of reading” and I'm like, “Oh, well, you know, I, this looks like somebody I need to follow.”
Because they're talking about, learning, talking about reading, and, being, being a social studies teacher and special ed teacher. I'm not really a reading specialist or a literacy teacher. Right. Although, every teacher, of course, certainly has a literacy component about what they're doing, but I always am wanting to find out more, about reading and literacy, because it's such an important skill in anything that anybody does.
And so I saw this, I started following this person and started looking at their posts. And I, don't remember who this person was, but I started as I was looking at their posts going, “wait, it sounds good on some things, but there's a lot of things that I learned about literacy, not just emergent literacy, but more advanced reading in the content area, that they're leaving out,” you know, “there's, there it's, this is almost all, about phonics instruction and, things that we learned 10 years before that, that weren't effective, that it looks a lot like, , those old, scripted reading programs.”
Nancy Bailey: That's right.
Scott Lee: And so. I was kind of taken in by somebody calling it the “science of reading” and then realized, wait, this isn't really based on science. So first off, tell us what the science of reading is.
And, of course people can't see it. But when, when I say “science of reading” I'm, I'm air quoting. The, the popular right now, science of reading, what is that? What's it missing? And, briefly why the more balanced approach, to the wider, approach to reading is most effective and understanding that we don't have five hours. I realize I realize this. This is kind of a, a graduate comprehensive essay, anyway, yeah, just, just kind of the highlights of reading,
Nancy Bailey: you know, when, when people talk about the “science of reading,” I, I think, they're primarily talking about explicit systematic instruction, and that often, breaks down to direct instruction, where the teacher will, say to a student, we'll give them directions into working on sounds, isolating skills, the sounds, the phonetic sounds so that they can put together sounds and parts of words and do it in such a way that they will learn to break the code and to be able to use those sounds to understand further words.
And that's not all bad. And we've looked at phonetic skills and we've worked with the skills for years and, and some children need to be able to break apart words that way they need to have some specific instruction on consonant and vowel sounds so that they can break those words apart because they do have trouble with reading, but a lot of children who have print rich environments when they're young, who are read to a lot and who have access to a lot of books and reading material. They sometimes pick it up very easily and don't need as much of the, the phonetic skill instruction, and, and so the neuroscience, when we hear about the research, they're usually referring to cognitive psychology or neuroscience and that's been with us for many years in special education at the university level in education.
We used to have a whole area of called learning disabilities where you would get certified. The only way you could work with kids with learning disabilities was that you would have to take all of these courses and we did talk about learning disabilities and we did talk about the neuroscience and brain studies that existed about the language processing centers in your brain.
It's all very interesting. It's a little more difficult to translate that into practice in the classroom, what that means in the classroom. And what you see with research now neuroscientists, scientists in particular, who have written and discussed. These areas of the brain that function for language and speech sounds and auditory sounds, and they, they might even say it's difficult to translate all of this into the classroom, but then they also will say that somehow that means that Children should learn, directly that they need explicit systematic instruction, with these sounds in order to ever be good readers.
My concern with this, um, I've got several concerns. For starters, again, a lot of children will pick up those sounds. By being read to when they hear and, and really when Children are born, they right away have a lot of sounds that they're listening to, along with visual sights, so they'll be able to put together objects with the sound.
They learn that “mama” is “mama” and “da-da” is that, you know, they begin to do that. So, they're they're constantly learning sounds and learning words. And, when you have children and when you're teaching young children, you know that there is that phase where children just talk incessantly, and, it's it's kind of like that comment you're talking so you can hear yourself talk because when people talk too much, but that's exactly what children are doing.
And oral language is incredibly important before children actually begin to read that oral language is. And if everything is working okay auditorily, they're going to pick up a lot of those phonemic sounds and not exactly broken up in, in, in words, but in strung together in words. So, they will learn phonetically no matter what. Now, there might be some children who do have problems auditorily who will not pick up those sounds and who will need to have more intensive skill instruction. My concern is when I see, parents being led to believe. That their kids should be reading the earlier, the better, the faster, the better and, we've watched as reading has been kind of pushed down into earlier grade levels into preschool.
I was looking the other day at one of the states [that] is putting into something like 35 million, and they're looking at three year reading with three year olds to third grade. And that's concerning, to expect little kids to read. I think you're going to wind up and and to have the systematic explicit instruction taught to all children with the belief that all children need that and at an earlier stage where they may not even know yet what it's for, you know, they may not be able to associate why they're learning these sounds with the great joy of books and then you get this. Information that queuing and pictures are not so great because they might get confused and pictures are just really wonderful for children to associate with words and to associate with sounds and to be able to, again, use that expressive oral language to discuss those pictures.
It all is kind of wrapped up together. And I what my fears are with the “science of reading” as it expresses now is not so much the skills because I do believe that children do need some skill instruction, when they're learning to read. But it said it's being pushed down earlier and it's being isolated.
It's being isolated from some of the other kinds of reading, experiences that make it a pleasurable experience. And some of those things have to do with. And I'm almost afraid to say these words, whole language, you know, whole language involves helping children to express themselves, working on the kinds of things that kids like letting them read books the way they want.
So, for me, reading, we, I wish we could drop “balanced literacy” and “whole language,” and the “science of reading” and just look individually at children. Where they're coming to school, what they know, and then teachers they should be well adept and understanding how to instruct reading, how to assess the reading skills that kids have and to know what they need and what they need to present to children.
And, it might be skill instruction with. Individual or small groups, it might be helping children to write. And writing is another thing that worries me about, the science of reading. I don't think they talk enough about the expressiveness of writing. They'll talk about writing words with the sounds and the words, but reading and writing go very closely together as well.
And, there's invented spelling, for example, where children can write the way they hear the words. And when they start doing that, it's atrocious. Their writing doesn't make any sense, but they continue to correct upon themselves, especially When they're getting other skills as well. So, I don't think that you can just isolate skills and teaching just segmented sounds.
I think you need to include a lot of other things with that, and as far as a so called “science of reading” there are certain things we do in reading that you could say are measurable, but that's not what they're referring to. They're referring to the neuroscience and they talk about vast amount, amounts of research, but it's very hard to find those studies.
And I've listened to and I've read the books that have to do with neuroscience and they're very interesting. And certainly, I'm all for brain science, learning more about the brain, but I haven't been able to really find all those vast studies that kind of back up.
The connection between neuroscience and how teaching phonics, especially in the classroom, connects, for me, learning the sounds of words can happen a lot in the reading to children as well. Reading rhyming books they will pick up those sounds there as well.
So, I, I don't see how we go from neuroscience. And transition that to total instruction on isolated skills in the classroom. Right. That makes sense.
Scott Lee: Yeah. While you're talking about what sometimes is happening about teaching the, the isolated discrete phonics type skills, at age three or four.
And thinking about one of my granddaughters who's in kindergarten or was in kindergarten last year. And she was so excited to share how she had read one of her picture books. And she'd sit down with me and read it, sit down and read it, with my wife more than once.
And, and part of what made it so interesting to me was that she embellished and embellished different things at different times in the story, and I'm like, “well, I'm certainly not going to correct her. She's making up something that makes sense to fill in.” And she probably at the start, you know, she probably was only reading maybe half the words, which is plenty.
She was. Five at the time,
Nancy Bailey: uh-hu,
Scott Lee: To me, I'm thinking, you know, what was more important is she was being motivated and excited about sharing something, not about how well she specifically every syllable and every phoneme or ever. Because yeah, there'd be some diphthongs that she couldn't figure out and she'd skip.
Okay, fine. You know, and she'd make something up.
Nancy Bailey: It doesn’t mean she's got a reading problem. Right. And, and to, to see children being diagnosed, to say now that we have, uh, um, problem with dyslexia that 20 percent of our kids have dyslexia. This is kind of controversial and there are those who will say that, no, it's more like 2 to 3 percent of children might have really disabilities, that fall in that range, and even dyslexia is quite controversial because, is it's very broad.
I mean, children who have reading and and having worked as a resource teacher with kids with reading difficulties, that were diagnosed who had IEPs. Most of them were different and I do believe that they're that learning disabilities do exist, and they are very difficult and certainly we want to help kids with those problems.
And another thing is that a lot of these kids. Don't get resource classes anymore. They're in the general class. And so, parents want them to learn to read, of course. And they're in a class of like, what, 30 kids? So really if a teacher has, especially the early child teachers, I don't think they should have more than 20 kids in their class, especially if they have any kids that have known disabilities.
They should have smaller classes so they can individualize their instruction more. And really get to the heart of the problems that kids are bringing when it comes to reading because some children will need skill instruction and most kids will need some, understanding of how to break words apart and especially for spelling.
But other kids might not need quite as much instruction and they may become bored. When I see kindergarten teachers now who line their kids up and in front of a board and they're facing. Different kinds of pronunciation letters with the speech mouths that I don't know if you've ever seen those high up there used. Used to be used for speech, they might be helpful for one to one speech to show kids how, but now they're up on on the boards where kids.
It's kind of a horror show for these little kids that are sitting down. They're looking at these mouths and and being told to recite sounds. And, a little of that goes a long way and do all of those children really need that is the question. For a lot of parents, I'll say why, of course, because they know their child might need it.
But, I think individual assessment is really critical to know who needs what and what stage of reading they're at. And then there are all kinds of ways of working with children. If children need some decodable books to sound out those sounds, fine. If you're teaching them, that's great. If they need level books to know, you know, to understand their grade level so that they can experience success while they're reading with you, fine.
That's part of what a teacher does. A teacher needs to know, have a whole lot in our arsenal skills up their sleeve to to help children, but you're very right with your granddaughter to know that little kids like to pretend read. I remember that distinctly. I remember reading to a neighborhood child and pretending that I was reading the book and pointing to the pictures and I didn't know the words at all. And that child believed me, I thought really highly of myself, didn't know a word at the time. That is okay, and you know, that is a part of motivation, and to have a parent, as I was lucky to have a parent that read to me every night, I was really curious about reading, I got a library card when I was very young, I can distinctly remember reading my first novel, little child novel, it was Honey Bunch, Honey Bunch is, nobody talks about Honey Bunch anymore, but being very proud, and children will graduate from picture books, looking at picture books to chapter books that does happen.
They won't always need pictures. I've had parents say if you start children, needing to look at pictures for words, they will always need pictures. No, no, no, they won't always they will graduate the more practice they get. But pictures are very important to children. Books like Richard Scarry's Busy Town.
I always talk about that where these little characters are all busy and there's little descriptions next to them telling what they're doing. Children look at those pictures. Look at those words. They want to understand what's happening. So, is that the only thing you should do with your child?
Of course not. Of course, they're going to need some reading instruction. And the other pet peeve I have with reading right now, as well, is this idea that that I want to talk about is this idea that by third grade children should all be reading very well, and that's the end of it.
Now they're going to be reading to learn. That's just to me ridiculous! Children are always reading to learn even at the very basic levels are learning with the picture books and all, but also children in third grade can still be learning to read to be reading, and I was a student teacher in a third grade class. My third grade teachers did such a wonderful job of creating skill groups. And there was no fear of these kids taking a test to fail third grade, we should end failing. That's just a horrible thing to do to kids who are learning to read. It's, it's just devastating to them. Um, but my third grade teachers that were my supervisors would pull together their third grade classes and look at the skills that kids were not, and then we would create these small skill groups. And then they would go around and work. We would all work with the children individually. Moving about. And then once they mastered those skills, we'd move to another skill. The kids never knew that they were in a multi-level group, like the response to intervention.
They weren't in a high group or a low group. They were in a skill group. And then they'd be with a certain group of kids. Then they'd move to another group. Where they'd be with another skill. So, it was never, any kind of demeaning kind of grouping that we did. And kids would work on skills.
They also would get their library books. They had spent plenty of time in the library picking out books they wanted to read, or that they wanted to look at, whether they could really read those words or not. They were the books that they chose. And. There wasn't any, “oh dear, you're not going to get those words.”
You know, I think that there's a lot of fear that kids are probably picking up about reading now, too. There's so much discussion about it. How can the little kids not hear about it? Hear about the concerns that their parents and teachers have about them not getting certain sounds right and how they're going to have to work on that.
And then you look at kindergarten, which used to be a half day. Now it's a full day. So, teachers have to fill in that time. And now in a lot of places, parents are kind of expecting their kindergartners to be reading by the time they go to first grade, which used to be unheard of. So, is it a science?
I don't think so. I don't think this is good science. I don't think there's that vast amount of research out there to show that, and I'm not the only one who says that. And there are neuroscientists that also argue among themselves about this. So, it's, it's a very, serious issue right now because reading truly is one of the most important skills a kid needs to learn in order to progress in school.
And there's nothing worse than, than seeing a child who approaches middle school that hates reading. And I can say that working with middle school and high school students, motivation, by that time is really, really difficult. They feel like failures, the “science of reading” people will say, “well, they didn't get that systematic explicit instruction,” but some children do get that. And sometimes it doesn't work, and some children do need it, but it's really important, I think, to break it down to the needs of the kids to find out. What, should be individualized or what they should get an individualized or small group instruction or with an IEP when they really do have reading difficulties.
Scott Lee: So, what should teachers. Be saying because in education we can't ignore the politics, and we can't ignore, that there are interests out there that sometimes push false narratives about education. And we could talk a lot about a lot of different issues about that but specifically towards the “science of reading,” because. It is being promoted there is money behind promoting it for whatever reason Whatever the reason is-isn't really important as much as what we as educators need to do and say about it What do you think that teachers should be telling parents?
And should be telling people in the community about the science of reading and or about What The real science behind reading instruction is or should be, what's the message or the narrative, as you see it.
Nancy Bailey: Well, this is a little off of that, but I think, my concern right now is what universities are doing to teach and to teach teachers how to teach reading because, there is a pedagogy there.
That is very important and teachers should come away from their university programs. Knowing a variety of skills, not just programs. They shouldn't. I hear some teachers say, “Oh, I learned Orton Gillingham at my school.” And, and Orton Gillingham has been around forever. There's a lot of concerns about the research showing its effectiveness.
I mean, it's been around a long time.
Scott Lee: Oh yeah. Yeah. I, I remember, I remember it when I was a teacher in the nineties. Yeah.
Nancy Bailey: And so if, if OG had been working, and it may work with some children, it might be helpful. But the research isn't really there for that program. And so, it's a little concerning when I hear some teachers point to programs at their universities might be teaching them.
I think teachers should understand the programs that are out there, they should know what those programs involve. And the pros and the cons of those programs because some of them have been out there for a long time. And they should also understand the methods, they should understand certainly phonics, how to teach, the sounds to children, because that is important.
And, they should understand the difference between direct instruction and using observational skills, which is a very big part of whole language, which I think is a, those, those two areas don't have to be separated. You can do both. You can help children with expressive writing and also work with them on sounding out letters and sounding out consonants and vowels, what have you.
But you should have a, lot of ideas about how to work with children and to what to look for. We don't talk enough about fine motor and gross motor skills, but there are some children that have a terrible time holding a pencil or may not be able to read, left to right, or, or understand certain things that are just very basic.
It's important to understand the different kinds of reading disabilities that exist, that, , are still a little bit unclear. , I, I remember having, a couple of students who had what was called dysnomia. They could look at a a picture of a, say like they see a rabbit, but they could not say “rabbit.” They would say “carrot” or “Easter.” They could not name that word. It's a naming issue. So, there's children sometimes have memory problems. They have sequencing problems. There's a whole array of learning disabilities that can exist in any child, so being able to spot check some of these difficulties and address them is very important, I think, in teacher education so that they have a very well rounded understanding of the kinds of reading approaches to take, and also content reading, reading for meaning, comprehension.
All of this, I think, needs to work together and not be isolated, in skills. I think to make it meaningful to the children, it has to work together. And so, I would start at the university level, saying that those programs need to address a whole lot of areas, not just particular programs.
And then teachers, I think should be following, the information that's out there. I think teachers are very lucky to have social media to be able to discuss these issues. What works with my child? What did this work? What did you do when you had this problem? That's great, but to think that there's one way of teaching reading and that's it. And you've got to stay the course. I think that's truly taking us backwards and also to the, the pushing of young children to read. We need to start talking about, reading development and child development and when these things happen.
Have occurred children's brains haven't a more advanced, they're not different there. We don't need to race instruction and children aren't disabled if they're not reading at the end of kindergarten, they have a lot more that they can learn and with a good teacher, they'll learn it.
So, teacher parent communications really important. I think teachers really need to get a feel for where parents are coming from, parents need to understand where teachers are coming from, and everyone needs to just stay tuned with all of the debates going on with the “science of reading,” and, some of the questions that are arising with what's being done there, because I think sooner or later we're going to have to point it out to what's what's happening in some classrooms that are using what they call the “science of reading.” If it's not covering everything that kids need to know, or if kids are coming away, not liking reading, which is a real concern, but I, teachers just need to follow the research, follow, like the National Council for teachers of English. They might follow their guide and keep abreast of what's happening.
Also, I think that one more thing that online programs. And when their district says we're going to be doing this, I think teachers should be involved in that decision making and I would hope that their unions would push for that too, that they'd be involved in the decision making for the choice of reading programs that they are going to have to incorporate in their classrooms.
And so, they should be a part of, they should be following what their school districts are choosing and have a voice in those programs. Because not all of those programs may cover the kinds of things I think should be covered in a really optimal reading class.
Scott Lee: Yeah. So definitely more teacher empowerment.
And, I do want to say that the way we originally became acquainted in the first place was I've been following your blog for a long time. And one of the things I like about it is that, when you talk about issues like the “science of reading” and, and a problem, that you bring up, there's always links, in it to the actual research, to the study, that you're talking about.
And so, I think your, your blog and your website is an excellent place for teachers to go in order to find out more information about the specific, types of reading and the, the balanced approach, the, I know people don't like to say whole language because it got politicized, um, but, you know, the research is clear that That there's no one right way to teach every every kid to read
Nancy Bailey: Very true.
That's a very good point. And thank you for mentioning my blog. And I do also on my blog. I have some different categories of information that. People focus on the blog, but I do have some different sections that, you can go to to find different links for a variety of areas and, and that might be helpful to parents and teachers.
I'm always trying to add new programs and, other blogs that also address reading issues and on public school issues because I don't just write about reading, but reading is the area that I worked in most as a special ed teacher. And it's near and dear to my heart. I know that, to be a parent of a child who struggles with reading is, is really tough.
And so, I sometimes disagree with parents, but I certainly respect their drive to get their kids the help that they need in reading and school should address whatever problems are kids are facing our schools should be able to do that. I'm still very much in favor of resource classes.
I think taking children out for an hour or two each day to focus intensely on those skills. Might be more, helpful than having them in a general class. Where other kids are doing things and maybe noticing their reading difficulties more and our resource classes, we used to work really hard to get our kids to read.
I mean, and I used to have kids who would go there back into the general class, but knew that I was available. They could come back and say, you know, “I'm having some problem with, taking notes. The teacher goes too fast.” And so I'd go to that teacher and say, “look, is there a way the other student could take notes? You could use some, duplicate paper to write those notes” or to put, of course, now kids use tech more, but, , I'd work with those teachers to help ensure that those kids were picking up. The information in their subjects and and so having a teacher work, more specifically in a resource setting to help children, pick up some of the skills they need that they may not quite understand and to focus on those particular disabilities that.
They need to sort of overcome learning ways to, to listen better and little skills that help them to focus more. There are learning strategies for that. And to do some of those program skills, a resource room might be a better place for that in, in some cases. There's, there's just a lot out there to understand about reading and.
And you're right. It's looking at individual kids and figuring out the best way to address wherever they're at, to give them additional reading skills to, to do well in school and to understand all their subjects.
Scott Lee: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Nancy.
Nancy Bailey: Well, thank you, Scott, for inviting me.
And, I hope that we'll see again, see again on social media. And, hopefully that our schools will, flourish.
Scott Lee: And we'll definitely, have a link to your website, and more resources on our website, the thoughtful teacher podcast.com. So thank you very much.
Nancy Bailey: Thanks, Scott. Take care.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode 9 of the 2024 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer, a member of the PodNooga Network. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
