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Moats, Louisa CookWhole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" ReadingInstruction.Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Washington, DC.2000-10-0032p.

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1627 K St., NW, Suite 600,Washington, DC 20006. Tel: 888-823-7474; Fax: 202-223-9226.For full text:http://www.edexcellence.net/library/wholelang/moats.html.Opinion Papers (120)MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.Position Papers; Primary Education; Public Schools; *ReadingInstruction; *Reading Research; *Reading Skills; StudentNeeds; Theory Practice Relationship; *Whole LanguageApproach*Balanced Reading Instruction

This position paper contends that the whole languageapproach to reading instruction has been disproved by research and evaluationbut still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials forclassroom use, some states' language-arts standards and other policydocuments, teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs, and theprofessional context in which teachers work. The paper finds that many whopledge allegiance to "balanced reading" continue to misunderstand readingdevelopment and to deliver "poorly conceived, ineffective readinginstruction." It argues that "rooting out whole language" from readingclassrooms calls for effort on eight separate fronts. The paper describeswhat whole language is, why it is contradicted by scientific studies, how itcontinues in education, and what should be done to correct the situation.(Contains a glossary and 57 notes.) (NKA)

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Dedicated to the memory of

Jeanne Sternlicht Chall1921-1999

America's foremost authority onhow children learn to read.

She taught us tolook for the evidence.

) )2 /i )))

Whole Language Lives On:

The Illusion of "Balanced"Reading Instruction

byLouisa Cook Moats

cm.-- THOMAS B.

ORDHAMOUNDATION

OUTSIDE THE BOX

4

Table of Contents

Foreword iii

Executive Summary vii

Glossary viii

Introduction and Summary 1

What Is Whole Language? 2

A Typical Whole-Language Class 6

What's Wrong with Whole Language? 6

The Consequences of Whole Language for Teachers and Children 8

Whole Language Persists 11

What Next? 14

Notes 17

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction i

5

ForewordRegular readers of this foundation's publications and web site know we believe strongly that

schools should utilize "best practices" that are supported by scientific research and should eschew

classroom methods that do not work. In no domain of education is that contrast more vivid than in

teaching young children to read. No domain has been studied more intensely. None has yielded

clearer and more definitive findings about what works and what does not. Yet no domain is more

vulnerable to the perpetuation of bad ideas and failed methods.

Three things are clear about early reading:

First, it isn't being handled well in American schools. Four in ten of our fourth-graders lack basic

reading skills. Tens of millions of adults are weak readers. Millions of children are needlessly clas-

sified as "disabled" when, in fact, their main problem is that nobody taught them to read when they

were five and six years old.

Second, we know what works for nearly all children when it comes to imparting basic reading

skills to them. (The scientific consensus is admirably summarized in the pages that follow.)

Third, we also know what doesn't work for most children. It's called "whole language."

Yet whole language persists, despite efforts by policymakers and reading experts to root it out.

Today, though, it often disguises itself, not using the term "whole language" but, rather, wearing the

fig leaf of "balanced" instruction. A lot of people who have a casual acquaintance with the research

have persuaded themselves that balanced reading instruction means a little of this, a little of that.

Take a cup of phonics from one cupboard, add a half-pint of whole language from the fridge, and

the resulting blend will succeed with children while avoiding the battles and conflicts of the "read-

ing wars." Everyone will be happy, and all will be well.

The problem is that it doesn't work that way. What's going on in many places in the name of "bal-

ance" or "consensus" is that the worst practices of whole language are persisting, continuing to

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction iii

6

inflict boundless harm on young children who need to learn to read. How and why that is happen-

ingand how and why such practices are misguided and harmfulare what this report is about.

In its pages, Louisa Cook Moats describes the whole-language approach; shows why it doesn't

work and how it has been disproven by careful research; and explains why it nonetheless persists in

practice and what should be done about that.

We don't kid ourselves. Rooting out failed methods of reading instruction from U.S. primary class-

rooms won't be easy. Those roots run deep, perhaps now deeper than ever, considering their new

coating of "balance." Yet Dr. Moats persuasively makes the case that this is a task that must be

taken on.

Louisa Moats is currently project director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human

Development (NICHD) Early Interventions Project in Washington, DC, a multiyear study of early

reading instruction. She is one of the world's leading voices for the application of reading research

in teacher preparation and classroom instruction. After receiving her doctorate in reading at

Harvard, Dr. Moats worked as a psychologist and consultant with individuals, schools, and educa-

tion agencies. She assisted the California State Board of Education in implementing the California

Reading Initiative. Her recent book, Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers (Brookes

Publishing, 2000), is the basis for the innovative courses she teaches at the Greenwood Institute in

Putney, Vermont, and Simmons College in Boston. Author of several other books and numerous

journal articles, she currently serves as a national board member of the International Dyslexia

Association. Readers wishing to contact Dr. Moats directly may write her at the NICHD Early

Interventions Project, 825 North Capitol Street, NE, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20002, or e-mail

her at l.moats @worldnet.att.net.

We are honored to dedicate this report to the memory of Jeanne Sternlicht Chall, who taught not

only Louisa Moats but also hundreds of other reading experts and teachers. Professor (and profes-

sor emerita) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1965 until her death in 1999 at the

age of 78, Jeanne Chall was, quite simply, the nation's foremost authority on how children learn to

read and how to teach them that most basic of basic skills. Her great book, Learning to Read: The

Great Debate, first published in 1967, was the first to enunciate clearly the essential elements of

the research synthesis that has since been refined and confirmed by, among others, the National

iv Louisa Cook Moats

Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the

recent National Reading Panel. Endlessly curious, astoundingly prolific, tireless in her pursuit of

the truth and her capacity to propagate it through her many students and disciples, passionate in her

commitment to the effective education of children (especially disadvantaged youngsters), Jeanne

Chall embodied superb research skills and a rare sense of how to turn scholarship into practice.

We're deeply grateful for her contributionand we miss her.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a private foundation that supports research, publications,

and action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in the

Dayton area. Further information can be obtained from our web site (www.edexcellence.net) orby

writing us at 1627 K Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. (We can also be e-mailed

through our web site.) This report is available in full on the Foundation's web site, and hard copies

can be obtained by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 (single copies are free). The Foundation is not connect-

ed to or sponsored by Fordham University.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., PresidentThomas B. Fordham FoundationWashington, DCOctober 2000

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction v

Executive SummaryThe whole-language approach to reading instruction continues to be widely used in the primarygrades in U.S. schools, despite having been disproven time and again by careful research and eval-uation. Whole language still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials for classroomuse, some states' language-arts standards and other policy documents, teacher licensing require-ments and preparation programs, and the professional context in which teachers work. Yet readingscience is clear: young children need instruction in systematic, synthetic phonics in which they aretaught sound-symbol correspondences singly, directly, and explicitly. Although most state educa-tion agencies, school districts, and federal agencies claim to embrace "balanced" reading instruc-tionimplying that worthy ideas and practices from both whole-language and code-emphasisapproaches have been successfully integratedmany who pledge allegiance to balanced readingcontinue to misunderstand reading development and to deliver poorly conceived, ineffectiveinstruction.

Almost every premise advanced by whole language about how reading is learned has been contra-dicted by scientific investigations that have established the following facts:

Learning to read is not a "natural" process. Most children must be taught to read through astructured and protracted process in which they are made aware of sounds and the symbolsthat represent them, and then learn to apply these skills automatically and attend to mean-ing.Our alphabetic writing system is not learned simply from exposure to print. Phonologicalawareness is primarily responsible for the ability to sound words out. The ability to usephonics and to sound words out, in turn, is primarily responsible for the development ofcontext-free word-recognition ability, which in turn is primarily responsible for the develop-ment of the ability to read and comprehend connected text.Spoken language and written language are very different; mastery of each requires uniqueskills.The most important skill in early reading is the ability to read single words completely,accurately, and fluently.Context is not the primary factor in word recognition.

Despite overwhelming evidence, the reading field rushed to embrace unfounded whole-languagepractices between 1975 and 1995. The effects have been far-reaching, particularly for those stu-dents who are most dependent on effective instruction within the classroom.

Whole language persists today for several reasons. A pervasive lack of rigor in university educationdepartments has allowed much nonsense to infect reading-research symposia, courses for teachers,and journals. Many reading programs have come to covertly embody whole-language principles.Additionally, many state standards and curricular frameworks still reflect whole-language ideas.

Rooting out whole language from reading classrooms calls for effort on eight separate fronts:

1. Every state should have language-arts content standards and curricular frameworks for each

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction vii

9

grade from kindergarten through third grade that are explicitly based on solid reading-research findings.

2. State assessments should be calibrated to show the effects of reading instruction as delineat-ed in well-written state standards.

3. State accountability systems should emphasize the attainment of grade-appropriate reading,spelling, and writing skills by third grade.

4. States should adopt rigorous licensing exams for new and veteran teachers alike.5. Alternative teacher-preparation programs should be encouraged.6. Traditional teacher-preparation programs of education should focus on training and reten-

tion of effective teachers.7. State-guided textbook adoptions should focus on the alignment of the material with research

evidence about what works best, and publishers should be required to show for whom theirproduct works and under what conditions.

8. Journalists and policymakers need to examine closely instructional programs and packagesoffered in the name of "balanced" reading.

Glossarycode-emphasis: An approach to reading instruction in which lessons are organized around the sys-tematic teaching of letter-sound correspondences and patterns, and children are taught to sound outwords using phonic knowledge.

graphophonic: A whole-language term that refers to the written spellings for individual speechsounds, more properly termed sound-symbol or phoneme-grapheme associations.

holism: The philosophy of teaching reading that values preservation of the whole word over seg-mentation of the word or other language entities into parts or synthesis of the whole from the parts.

morphemes: The smallest meaningful units in language, such as the prefix, root, and suffix inob-serv-ance.

orthography: The writing system for a language. English is an alphabetic, phonemic, and mor-phemic orthography; Chinese characters are a logographic orthography.

phonemes: The smallest sound units (consonants and vowels) that combine to make the word of alanguage, for example /sh/, /e/, /1/ in "shell."

phonological: Having to do with the speech sound system of a language, including the productionand interpretation of the sound patterns of language.

viii Louisa Cook Moats

10

Introduction and SummaryIn policy circles, the storm over reading

instruction would seem to have calmed. Stateagencies, large school districts, and the U.S.Department of Education all claim toembrace balanced reading instruction. Theconcept of balance implies, in turn, that wor-thy ideas and practices from both whole-lan-guage and code-emphasis approaches to read-ing have been successfully integrated into aneclectic mix that should go down easily withteachers and kids. Educators who wish totake no stand in the reading wars may safelyembrace a little of each perspective and claimthat what they are doing is both based on "thelatest research" and grounded in a philosophi-cal synthesis between two previously warringpositions.

Appearances can be deceiving, however,and painless solutions are often wrong.Unfortunately, many who pledge allegianceto balanced reading continueto misunderstand readingdevelopment and to deliverpoorly conceived, ineffectiveinstruction. In fact, despitenumerous claims by people inthe field, the deep divisionbetween reading science andwhole-language ideology' hasnot been bridged. Probably itcannot and should not be. Inmy view, a marriage of theseperspectives is neither possi-ble nor desirable. It is tooeasy for practitioners, whileendorsing "balance," to continue teachingwhole language without ever understandingthe most important research findings aboutreading or incorporating those findings intotheir classroom practice. Wrong-headed ideasabout reading continue to characterize text-books, reading course syllabi, classroominstructional materials, state language-artsstandards, and policy documents.

Here is what reading science actually tellsus about effective literacy instruction:

All children need explicit, systematicinstruction in phonics and exposure torich literature, both fiction and nonfic-tion.Although children need instruction inphonics in early reading development,even then, attention to meaning, com-prehension strategies, language devel-opment, and writing are essential.At all times, developing children'sinterest and pleasure in reading mustbe as much a focus as developingtheir reading skills.'

Well-done studies of reading instructionsupport systematic, synthetic phonics inwhich children are taught sound-symbol cor-

respondences singly, directly,and explicitly.' Further, suchstudies show that childrenshould be taught directly howto blend those sound-spellings (such as the /ch/,and /ck/ in "chick") untilthey can decode almost anyunknown word. This instruc-tion should be part of, andlinked to, a complete instruc-tional program that includesphoneme awareness, plentifulreading to build fluency,vocabulary development, and

guided oral reading to build comprehension.Note, though, that this prescription is not

equivalent to an eclectic combination ofwhole language and phonics. Whole-languageapproaches by definition minimize or omitdirect, systematic teaching of language struc-ture (phoneme awareness, spelling patternsand rules, grammar, and so forth) in the nameof preserving an unbroken focus on reading

Unfortunately, manywho pledge allegianceto "balanced" reading

continue to mis-understand readingdevelopment and to

deliver poorlyconceived, ineffective

instruction.

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction I

11

for meaning. To the onlooker, these pointsmay sound trivial; in the classroom, however,such distinctions have profound conse-quences.

True, reading policy and practice havebeen righted to some extent since the mid-1990s when California's panic over low read-ing achievement propelled radical alterationsof that state's standards, assessments, curricu-lum, and criteria for adopting instructionalmaterials and licensing teachers. California'spolicies on early reading are now moreexplicit and more compatible with readingscience than perhaps any state but Texas. Yetresistance to the California reading initiativehas been fierce, especially in the state univer-sities whose faculties have denounced thelegislative changes and continue to promoteideas and programs that are saturated withwhole-language ideology, now disguisedunder other names. Some whole-languagedefenders claim that they have always advo-cated teaching both phonics and comprehen-sion, and thus revision of their understand-ings about reading is not necessary.' Othersinsist that they understand the importance ofphonological skills in early reading, but they

then fail to practice or teach them systemati-cally.' Still others confirm that phonologicalskills are important for learning to read, evenas they caution teachers that phonemicawareness and phonics instruction can bedangerous, boring, ineffective, or irrelevant,and shouldn't be overdone. Such a toneechoes even through Teaching Children toRead, the recent report of the NationalReading Panel.' Where sound policy is aheadof practice, whole language may appear to bedying. Inside the classroom, however, it's notdead at all.

The mission of this paper is to describewhat whole language is, why it is contradict-ed by scientific studies,' how it continues ineducation, and what should be done to correctthat situation. So long as whole-languageideas influence classroom practice to anygreat extent, students who are most depen-dent on effective instruction inside the class-room stand to lose. Recognizing and con-fronting bankrupt ideas and practices, eventhough they are masquerading under benignterms such as balanced reading, continues tobe an important mission for education leadersand policymakers.

What Is Whole Language?Even at its most popular, whole language

defied definition by those who attempted tostudy it objectively.' Among the publicationsof whole-language advocates, one findsagreement that it is primarily a system ofbeliefs and intentions.' It embraces a set ofpractices in teaching reading and writing thatare derived from a more general philosophyof teaching and learning. Relying on theoryderived largely from introspection into theirown mental processes, Ken Goodman andFrank Smith in the late 1960s advanced thenotion that meaning and purpose should bethe salient goals in early reading instruction.'°Observing that adults appear to process the

2 Louisa Cook Moats

written word without recoding it letter by let-ter or sound by sound, and claiming that chil-dren should learn to read as naturally as theylearn to speak, Smith asserted that the decom-position of words into sounds was pointless;that attention to letters was unnecessary andmeaningless; that letter-sound correspon-dences were "jabberwocky" to be avoided;and that skill development was largely bor-ing, repetitive, nonsensical, and unrelated todeveloping real readers." Smith, Goodman,and their disciples pushed ideas that wereeagerly and readily embraced by progressiveeducators turned off by drab basal readers,'mechanistic drills, and the knowledge that the

12

basal readers in use had not solved all of theirinstructional challenges. Teachers were per-suaded that the cause of most reading failurewas insufficient emphasis on reading realbooks for real purposes. By the mid-1980s,schools were ready to throw out basal read-ers, phonics workbooks, spelling programs,and other "canned" material so that teacherscould create individualized reading instruc-tion with "authentic" children's literature.

The International Reading Association(IRA) and the National Council for Teachersof English vigorously promoted the philoso-phy and practices of wholelanguage. Publishing houses,university reading depart-ments, state education agen-cies, and professional devel-opment providers jumped onthe bandwagon. The ideaswere disseminated throughInternet connections, teacherjournals that do not requirearticles to meet standards ofscientific accuracy, coursesand textbooks used in schoolsof education, and instruction-al manuals for teachers.Recently published books andarticles' continue to characterize the ortho-doxy of whole language as follows:

Children and adults use similar strategiesto read and spell. Whole-language believersassert that children process print and compre-hend it like adults. Children will learn fromimitating adult reading. The teacher is amodel of adult literacy, and modeling is amethod for teaching children. Thus, theteacher is encouraged to sit in front of theclass and to be seen reading silently for a por-tion of each day in which the children arealso to be reading silently or in pairs. Theteacher is also to read aloud, pointing to theprint in a big book, as children follow along.The children may point to the words as theteacher reads them. The passage is read sev-eral times this way until it is memorized.'

Although this traditional practice may beworthwhile, "shared reading" in whole lan-guage has replaced instruction in how to readthe words sound by sound. Children areexpected to figure out for themselves the con-nection between the letters and the sounds ofthe words as the adult points to them. Thereis no further explication of how the lettersrepresent words. The assumption that chil-dren learn like adults also translates into stu-dent choice of reading material, a focus onadvanced reading comprehension strategiesfor young children, avoidance of reading

groups or sequential oralreading, and ample time inschool for independent silentreading in the company ofothers (Drop Everything andRead!). These activities arethe instructional core of awhole-language curriculum,not ancillary components.

Spelling, like reading, ismeant to happen by havingchildren imitate the stagesand characteristics of adultwriting. Debbie Powell andDavid Hornsby, in a best-selling handbook for teach-

ers, state, "We feel that there are no stages ofdevelopment in terms of the strategiesspellers use because the strategies beginningspellers use are the same as those of maturespellers."

Learning to read and spell is just likelearning to talk. All language is naturallyacquired, according to whole-language devo-tees. Reading is analogous to listening; chil-dren's brains are focused on meaning as lan-guage is processed, not on the structure orform of language. To focus instead on struc-ture and form is unnatural and unnecessary.Children will extract the structure and formof print if they are exposed to it sufficientlyin the context of meaning-making activities,just as they have extracted the rules ofphonology and syntax in oral language with-

Whole-language advo-cates believe that teach-ers who teach compo-

nent skills and whomake reading a con-scious process may

spoil the reading expe-rience for children.

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction 3

13

out any formal instruction. Thus, the teacheris instructed to stress the meaning of what isbeing read, to ask always if a word the childmisread "makes sense," and to emphasizeimitative reading of "whole, authentic texts"even if the child cannot read them indepen-dently. The acquisition of the alphabetic codeis a minor concern because it will happen ifchildren have a purpose for learning it.

Phoneme awareness, phonics, spelling,punctuation, and other skills of written lan-guage can be learned "natu-rally." "Most children willlearn to read and write withno explicit instruction inphonics and spelling," whole-language experts advise.'The word "naturally," whichconnotes a wholesome andspontaneous processunspoiled by human tamper-ing, means without deliberatepractice. Natural learning isplayful, incidental, and easy.Phoneme awareness will hap-pen if children play rhyming games; spellingwill happen if children write; word recogni-tion will happen if children follow the printas the adult reads; and comprehension willhappen if children's curiosity is piqued. Theteacher needn't follow a structure orsequence; she is to share, guide, and facilitateas the child discovers how reading works.Powell and Hornsby state, "Proficient readerseasily recognize most words and gain mean-ing usually without even attending to all ofthe letters or even all of the words, becausetheir ability to decode is largely automaticand subconscious."" Whole-language advo-cates believe that teachers who teach compo-nent skills and who make reading a consciousprocess may spoil the reading experience forchildren.

Teach phonics and spelling on an "asneeded" basis, that is, after students makeerrors on words while they are reading andwriting. Phonics is allowed into the whole-

language classroom, but it is not taught first,foremost, or formally. The teacher is toobserve errors ("miscues") children are mak-ing while reading text and is then to provide"mini-lessons" on the word pattern or sound-symbol correspondence the children missedwhile reading." The children's errors dictatewhat will be taught. The goal is to read a spe-cific text, not to learn skills that may general-ize to all texts.

Too much phonics instruction is harmfulto children, so keep it unob-trusive. In whole-languageorthodoxy, phonics is seen asa distraction, an interferencethat prevents real readingfrom occurring. Phonics andother instruction in compo-nent reading skills are neces-sary evils that divert childrenfrom reading authentic textand thinking creatively aboutits content. Teachers arewarned that if childrenreceive too much phonics

instruction outside of a meaningful context,they will become "word callers" who do notunderstand the real purposes of reading. Skilllessons are to be unobtrusive, brief, and, ifpossible, disguised. Teaching phonics shouldbe a covert operation.

Children should construct their owninsights into language. The skilled whole-lan-guage teacher is coach, model, and guide.Concepts are to be discovered, not presented,because discovery, according to the whole-language canon, promotes higher-order think-ing. If the goal of the lesson is to have chil-dren read words with /o/ and notice all theways the /o/ sound is spelled, the teacherdoes not provide the list of the spellings for/o/, examples of each, and planned practice toensure their recognition. Children are to con-struct their own knowledge of /o/. The chil-dren may be asked to search a text for all thewords with the /o/ sound and then groupthem according to their spellings (ow, oe, oa,

According to whole-language approaches,teaching all the letter-

sound correspondences,and teaching childrenthe skills to sound out

an entire word,is unnecessary.

4 Louisa Cook Moats 14

o, ough, and so forth). Although activeengagement is a principle of good teaching,the discovery approach to language skills canbe imprecise and unnecessarily time consum-ing. It should not replace direct teaching ofconcepts.

It is unimportant to teach strategies forreading single words out of context.According to whole-language doctrine, thepoint of reading is not to read individualwords; it is to understand connected text.This truism has been translated into a prohi-bition against teaching or testing the child'sability to read single words out of context.Work on word recognition is minimized infavor of literature-related activities, even inthe beginning stages when children cannotyet read. Accuracy in word reading is not val-ued for its own sake. Children's readingerrors (miscues) are accepted if the error isthe same part of speech as the misread wordor if it does not change the meaning of thepassage.'9 The teacher is directed away fromthe importance of accurate word reading outof context.

Good readers can recognize words on thebasis of a few sound-symbol correspon-dences, such as beginning and ending conso-nants, and don't really need to know the innerdetails, such as vowels. In whole language,reading is viewed as a process of predictingwords on the basis of meaning and context.The good reader samples the print, anddetailed decoding of all the sounds in wordsis unnecessary. As a consequence, teachingall the letter-sound correspondences, andteaching children the skills to sound out anentire word, is unnecessary. Thus, many so-called phonics activities in whole-languageclassrooms emphasize the decoding of initialconsonants (and maybe end consonants) andword families (that is, the part of a syllablecomposed of the vowel and all the conso-nants that follow it, such as -ild, -ank, orodge), but complete knowledge of the sound-symbol system is not emphasized.

When a child is reading and cannot rec-

ognize a word, the child should be asked toguess at the word from context and thensound the word out if guessing does not yielda word that would make sense in thesentence. On a third-grade teacher's wall, in aclassroom in Washington, DC, where I con-duct a research project, is the followingposter:

If a word in a sentence is unfamiliar,read to the end of the sentence. Skip theword you do not know. After reading thesentence, use the context to guess theword. If you still do not know the word,do the following:

Think about your letter sounds.

Think about word parts.

Try to say the word. (Does it makesense?)

If you still don't know the word, lookit up in the glossary or dictionary.

Ask someone for help.

Whole language dictates that recognitionof unknown words is a function of three"cueing systems."'" Semantic, syntactic, andgraphophonic processes are depicted as theenablers of functional reading, although thegraphophonic cueing system (an invention ofwhole language, not of cognitive psychology)plays a minor, back-up role in whole-lan-guage models of reading. The sense of thepassage is supposed to drive word recogni-tion. The graphophonic cueing system is tobe deployed as a strategy of last resort if con-text-based guessing has not yielded the cor-rect word!' The problem with the model,however, is that skilled readers do not rely oncontext to read words. They recognize themout of context by their letter-sound corre-spondences.


15

A Typical Whole-Language Class"A first- or second-grade classroom in

which whole-language ideas predominate isnot the traditional class of bygone years. Ithas clusters of desks, not rows; the space isnot arranged so that children focus on theteacher in front of the class. Learning centersand clusters of desks lend themselves to indi-vidualized, self-directed, and small-grouplearning. A classroom library corner hasmany books of different genres and a com-fortable place to read. Little use is made ofthe chalkboard. Paper charts prevail. There isa prominent "word wall," on which high-fre-quency vocabulary is placed in alphabeticalorder. Words such as off, on, orange, open,our and oil might all be placed under Oo.The varying sounds of those letter correspon-dences are irrelevant to the presentation.

Children gather on the floor around theteacher's chair during reading instruction.The teacher introduces a lesson with a"shared" reading; she previews a selectionwith the youngsters by taking a "picturewalk" through the book's illustrations. Sheintroduces new vocabulary meanings neededto understand the story, but there is little ref-erence to word structure. The five to ten newwords on the vocabulary list are presented asif they should be recognized on sight, by theirappearance and context. Vocabulary wordsare selected for their meanings, not for theirsound-symbol correspondences, so they arenot used to reinforce a lesson on sound-sym-bol decoding. The teacher reads the book

aloud as she follows the text with her finger.She leads a discussion about the story, elicit-ing from children their prior knowledge ofthe content and their questions about the con-tent. After the story, she teaches a phonicsmini-lesson on a family of words with similarspellings, by listing them and asking the chil-dren to read them aloud. The words are cho-sen because of their use in the text.

More readings of the text follow on sub-sequent days. By week's end, children mayhave read the same text three or four times,the first few by choral reading and patterning.When children take turns reading, they areencouraged to refer to the sense of the text tofigure out unknown words. The teacher givescues such as, "what would make sense there,""look at the pictures," "it rhymes with 9/

or "look at the beginning sound," when achild is stuck. Assignments often involvewriting or illustrating a personal response tothe text in a reader-response journal. Spellinginstruction is given on those words that thechildren misspell, after they have been usedin writing. During instruction, the childrenare asked to invent what they think the likelyspelling of a word might be (Have a go!)before the teacher gives them the correctspelling. There are no spelling lists orspelling workbooks. Children are expected tocollaborate as they work on reading and writ-ing projects. This is a constructivist environ-ment: knowledge and truth will be discoveredif teachers put children in the lead.

What's Wrong with Whole Language?Almost every premise advanced by whole

language proponents about how reading islearned has been contradicted by scientificinvestigations. Almost every practice stem-ming from these premises has been less suc-cessful with groups of both normally devel-oping and reading-disabled children than

6 Louisa Cook Moats

practices based on reading science. AsMichael Pressley, editor of EducationalPsychologist, has remarked, "At best, muchof whole-language thinking...is obsolete, andat worst, much of it never was well informedabout children and their intellectual develop-ment...."

16

Not all consequences of whole-languageideology have been detrimental; mistakenbeliefs about early reading acquisition havealso been associated with some worthwhileideas and sensible strategies such as encour-aging student self-assessment, using classicchildren's literature, reading aloud daily,organizing collaborativegroups, and involving parentsand students in literacy home-work." Most educators com-monly hold such ideas. Theyare not the core ideas onwhich whole language wasconstructed, however, andthey are not the intellectualproperty of whole language.Whole-language beliefs aboutthe psychology of basic read-ing instruction, and the prac-tices that have been based onthose beliefs, are misin-formed in theory and ineffec-tive in application.

The National Reading Panel's TeachingChildren to Read reviews once more what isknown about the psychology of reading andreading instruction. It does not evaluatewhole language directly, but it does synthe-size evidence on critical components ofteaching reading. It resonates with severalother reputable reviews of research, includingMarilyn Adams's Beginning to Read, JackFletcher and G. Reid Lyon's summary of theNational Institute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment's studies of reading," andCatherine Snow, M. Susan Burns, and PegGriffin's Preventing Reading Difficulties inYoung Children. The tenets and practices ofwhole language are contradicted by the fol-lowing facts:

Learning to read is not natural." Largenumbers of children fail to learn to read withfluency, accuracy, and comprehension.Alphabetic writing systems are a late culturalinvention for which we are not biologicallyspecialized. Only some languages have writ-

ten symbol systems, and many of those writ-ing systems represent whole words, concepts(morphemes), or syllables. Only some of themost recently invented writing systems repre-sent individual speech sounds. Spoken lan-guage may be hard-wired in the human brain,but written language is an acquired skill that

requires special, unnaturalinsights about the sounds inwords. Most children mustbe taught to read through arather protracted process inwhich they are made awareof sounds and the symbolsthat represent them, and thenlearn to apply these skillsautomatically and attend tomeaning.

The alphabetic principleis not learned simply fromexposure to print. Childrencan understand our alphabet-ic writing system if they have

acquired a more fundamental understandingcalled phonological awareness. That is, inorder to read new words written with analphabetic system, children need to be able tomap the symbols to the speech sounds thatmake up spoken words. Children who lackthe required insights often are unable to reador spell well, even if they are reasonablyintelligent or acquainted with the informationin books. Phonological awareness is primarilyresponsible for the development of the abilityto sound words out. The ability to use phon-ics and to sound words out, in turn, is primar-ily responsible for the development of con-text-free word-recognition ability. Context-free word-recognition ability, moreover, isprimarily responsible for the development ofthe ability to read connected text and compre-hend it."

Spoken language and written languageare very different, and mastery of eachrequires unique skills and proficiencies.Many children who are challenged in learn-ing written language are relatively proficient

Almost every whole-language practice hasbeen less successfulwith groups of bothnormally developingand reading-disabled

children than practicesbased on reading

science.


17

in spoken language. Spoken language sys-tems are learned automatically, without con-scious instruction, when children share expe-riences and language with caretakers. Spokenlanguage comprises deeply networked rulesfor sound production and sentence construc-tion that are devised andlearned by a community oflanguage speakers. Writtenlanguages, in contrast, arearbitrary systems that use avariety of symbols for words,concepts, syllables, andsounds. Written English, incontrast to spoken English,uses a much wider vocabularyand more complex, formalsyntax to convey meaning.Reading and writing requiremastery of a special languagewith a special skill thatexceeds our natural abilities."

The most important skillin the beginning stages of reading isity to read single words completely, accurate-ly, and fluently. Most of the variability inreading achievement at the end of first gradeis accounted for by children's ability todecode words out of context, using knowl-edge of phonic correspondences. The mostcommon and fundamental characteristic ofpoor text reading is the inability to read sin-gle words accurately and fluently. Skill in

word reading in turn depends on both phono-logical awareness and the development ofrapid associations of speech to print."

Context is not the primary factor in wordrecognition. Context is valuable for decipher-ing the meanings and uses for unfamiliar

words once they have beennamed or decoded. It alsohelps to resolve ambiguitiesthat arise from reading wordssuch as content, which canbe a noun or predicate adjec-tive (or verb). Words are rec-ognized, however, fromdetailed perceptual data atthe average rate of about fivewords per second. We seewhat is printed, every letterof it, and our minds recog-nize letters, sounds, andword pieces simultaneouslyand interactively as wesearch for meaning. Good

readers are more aware of the details of lan-guage structure and more attentive to internalaspects of words than poor readers. They areless likely to use a guessing strategy. In fact,guessing from context leads to egregiouserrors; only 10 to 25 percent of words arecorrectly guessed." Recognizing words suchas scarred and scared, content and context,and devoid and devout require precise letter-wise decoding skill.

Most children must betaught to read through arather protracted pro-cess in which they aremade aware of soundsand symbols that repre-

sent them, and thenlearn to apply these

skills automatically andattend to meaning.

the abil-

The Consequences of Whole Languagefor Teachers and Children

Between 1975 and 1995, an entire fieldrushed to embrace a set of unfounded ideasand practices without any evidence that chil-dren would learn to read better, earlier, or ingreater numbers than they had with the basalreaders in use at the time!' Although whole-language believers shunned basal readers in

8 Louisa Cook Moats

favor of reading programs created by individ-ual teachers from children's books, publishersswiftly jumped on the bandwagon to producewhole-language materials for schools. TheCalifornia Language Arts Frameworks of1987 were especially influential in drivingpublishers away from basic-skill instruction."

18

Basal programs were marketed and sold, butnow without emphasis (or even any lessons)on direct teaching of phonemic awareness,spelling, phonics, grammar, handwriting, orother language skills. Predictable or repetitivetext that children could memorize was pre-ferred to stories that required children tosound words out based on what they hadbeen taught. Beyond classroom readinginstruction itself, however, whole languagehas had far-reachingit is not too much tosay corruptingeffects:

Rejection of reliable, valid measures ofachievement. In order to justify its love affairwith whole language in the face of little or noevidence for its positive results, the field ofreading education began to disavow scientificmethodology and objective measurement."Between 1989, when Steven Stahl and P.D.Miller conducted their first major review ofthe evidence, and 1994, when they updatedtheir analysis, twenty offorty-five studies that pur-portedly evaluated the effec-tiveness of whole languagedeclined to use or report anystandardized measure of read-ing achievement. Instead ofacknowledging that objectiveassessments were provingthem wrong, many reading-education researchers rejectedobjectivity itself. Thoseinvested in defending wholelanguage criticized traditionalachievement tests as unau-thentic and replaced themwith measures of motivation,enjoyment, or self-esteem. Attitude, notachievement, became the outcome of concernin the reading education research community.A positive attitude toward reading wasexpected to lead children automatically intomore and better reading. Many reading-edu-cation researchers replaced standardized, reli-able, validated assessments with alternativeassessments that probed attitudes. The goal of

teaching became love of reading, not the abil-ity to read. The effects of whole-languagemethods on student achievement were thusimpossible to determine.

Teachers were easily persuaded that thescience of behavioral measurement had littleto offer them. The schools of education didnot require their own students to understandconcepts such as behavioral sampling, corre-lation, prediction, reliability, validity, andnormative standards. Teachers were seldomobliged to inform instruction with samples ofcritical component reading skills: phonemeblending and segmentation, sound-symbolassociation knowledge, decoding and spellingof regular spelling patterns, text-reading flu-ency, or vocabulary knowledge. Instead,teachers were and are taught to use forms ofreading assessment that have little reliabilityor correspondence to research-validated out-come measures. The goal in whole language

is to measure the process ofreading, not the product ofinstructiona difficult mis-sion to accomplish evenwhen the reading process iswell conceived.

Miscue analysis and "run-ning records" have been andcontinue to be widely pro-moted whole-languagetools." Even within the pastyear (1999), Connecticut wasteaching the value of runningrecords and miscue analysisin state advisories on reading.A running record measuresfluency and accuracy in oral

reading of a "leveled" book (not a norm-ref-erenced passage) and asks the teacher to clas-sify a child's errors according to which cue-ing system produced each of them. Althoughoral-passage reading rate and accuracy aregood measures of overall reading abilitybecause they measure word-recognition speedand accuracy, the classification of "miscues"is unreliable, invalid, and a waste of the

In order to justify itslove affair with wholelanguage in the face oflittle or no evidence forits positive results, thefield of reading educa-tion began to disavowscientific methodologyand objective measure-

ment.


19

teacher's time." Practically speaking, oneteacher is not likely to classify the errors inthe same way as the next teacher, students arenot likely to have similar miscue patternsfrom one day to the next, and the relationshipbetween miscue patterns, reading achieve-ment levels, and response to reading instruc-tion has never been demonstrated." Whenteachers are not able to measure valid con-structs with reliable tools, they cannot useclassroom assessments to direct their teach-ing.

Error analysis has value when based on adefensible understanding of reading andspelling processes. It is worthwhile if it helpsus determine what kind of problem a childhas, what kind of information that childneeds, and what kind of instructional activi-ties are likely to work well. Miscues and run-ning records do not meet these criteria.

Minimizing the importance of languagestructure for teachers and students. In thewhole-language context, neither students norteachers need to know specific conceptsabout the structure of spoken or written lan-guage. Speech sounds, syllables, spelling cor-respondences, sentence parts, grammaticalcategories, and cohesive devices are mini-mized together. If holism and contextuallearning are valued, then language partsbecome unimportant. If students are to learnreading and spelling through imprinting,modeling, and discovery, then teachers neednot know explicit linguistic analysis. If con-cepts can be taught minimally in mini-lessons, then they do not need to be definedwith precision, understood in relation to oneanother, or taught methodically. Pre-deter-mined sequences, selection of componentskills, and planned lessons in which skills aresystematically developed are unnecessary.Teachers can get by knowing very little abouttheir language; their own knowledge gapswill not be exposed during a whole-languagelesson.

Cursory treatment of linguistic conceptscontinues to be applauded indescriptions of

10 Louisa Cook Moats

well-taught whole-language lessons. A recentarticle in the IRA journal, The ReadingTeacher," describes an exemplary whole-lan-guage teacher at work. She is helping a childsound out the word happy." The teacherinforms the child that the sounds are /h/ /a//p/ /p/ /y/. This information, however, is inac-curate: the doubled letter in happy is aspelling convention. There is only one /p/sound in happy. The letter is doubled becauseof the juncture of two syllables, the first ofwhich has a short vowel. This student hasbeen misinformed by the teacher's explana-tion, but the teacher (and The ReadingTeacher's editors) remains in the dark as well.

The same teacher goes on to help anotherchild decode nose. She asks him what lettersthe word begins and ends with (n and e).Then, the teacher asks the child what the let-ter e stands for, and the child says /e/. Next,the teacher says that the e is silent and pointsto the other vowel, o. She tells the child thatthe o will be long and will say its name.Finally, she instructs the child to look at thepicture and guess what word starts with an n.The child doesn't respond. The teacher says itstarts with /n/ and points to the picture; thechild finally gets nose. The aversion to directteaching of language, based on accurateanalyses of phonology and orthography, per-sists.

Knowing the speech sounds in apple orhappy and the syllable conventions thatunderlie such spellings is uncommon amongrecently trained reading teachers." Knowinghow to teach a language concept so that chil-dren are led systematically to grasp it is evenless common. These gaps in professional con-tent knowledge adversely affect the children.In interchanges such as those just cited, thestudents have been short-changed; the infor-mation provided to them is incomplete, inac-curate linguistically, and ineffectively taught.The students' propensity to guess from partialunderstanding is reinforced because theyhave not been taught systematically how thespelling patterns work or practiced the associ-

20

ations so that they can be used successfully atthe next encounter. They have been encour-aged to guess from context because they donot have the skill to read the new words inde-pendently. Of greatest concern, the leadingjournal for teachers of reading portrays suchinstruction as exemplary because it mini-mizes the teaching of word analysis andfocuses the child on meaning.

Misunderstanding of the role of skills incompetent performance. A most unfortunatelegacy of whole language has been the deni-gration of skill building and skill instructionin the name of holism. The word skills hasbeen repeatedly associated with pejorativeterms such as boring, isolated, meaningless,and dreadful in whole-language rhetoric.Skill building is never described as necessary,engaging, satisfying, or enjoyable, or identi-fied as the essential base on which expert per-formance is constructed. Out on this limb, thefield of reading education has rejected majorpremises of cognitive psychology. JohnAnderson, a cognitive psychologist atCarnegie Mellon University who won anachievement award from the AmericanPsychological Association in 1995, comment-ed in his acceptance address:

The theory [of knowledge acquisi-tion] implies that acquiring competen-ce is very much a labor-intensive busi-ness in which one must acquire one-by-one all the knowledge components.This flies very much in the face of cur-rent educational fashion, but...this edu-cational fashion is having a very delete-rious effect on education. We need to

recognize and respect the effort thatgoes into acquiring competence.4°

Competence, he explains, is more than thesum of its parts: it depends on deploymentof the right information for the right pur-pose at the right time. Having at one's dis-posal a large storehouse of organized anddefined information is prerequisite forcomplex applications of facts, concepts,and skills!"

Equation of teacher empowerment withfreedom from structured curricula.Professions are generally defined by theknowledge and skill that their members share.The public interest depends on such defini-tion and the ability of the professional com-munity to regulate itself accordingly. Wholelanguage, however, promotes the ideas ofteacher independence and self-sufficiency.Instead of encouraging the development ordissemination of better instructional pro-grams, or encouraging teachers to apply bestpractices validated by others, whole-languageeducators encouraged teachers to invent theirown individual curricula and to rely primarilyon their own experience to make instructionaldecisions. Even now, reading education pro-fessors in the U.S. continue to rail againsteducation policies that impose constraints ordirectives ("mandates") about curriculum ormethods, complaining that the loss of controlby classroom teachers over what they do intheir classes is a threat to both democracy andprofessionalism." In the climate perpetuatedby such rhetoric', teachers' incentives to col-laborate, to replicate best practices, or tostudy research are diminished.

Whole Language PersistsThe stubborn persistence of unsupported

ideas and practices in reading education(indeed, all of education) puzzles and dis-mays many people outside the field. When a

field continues to value philosophy over evi-dence that certain practices benefit childrenmore than others, we must ask why this is thecase.


21

Ideology is valued over evidence. Onestraightforward explanation for the nonsensethat infects reading education must be a per-vasive lack of rigor in academic educationdepartments. In reading, anyone who publish-es in any form is customarily referred to as a"researcher" in conference programs.Reading associations' "research symposia"routinely include speakers whose work bearsno relation to objective methods of inquiry.Reading conferences most often attended byteachers are primarily marketing conventionsfor publishers, trainers, and others with prod-ucts and services to promote.

Reading-research journals publish articlesthat defy any reasonable standard of accept-able methodology. For example, a recentissue of The Reading Teacher (spring 2000)includes an article in which"researchers" visited eightpreselected whole-languageclassrooms to document whatthe teachers were doing. Onlyteachers who used methodsconsistent with whole-lan-guage theory were includedin the study." The a prioriassumption communicated toreaders was that good teach-ers are whole-language teach-ers. The number of citationson reading screened by theNational Reading Panel(100,000) is many times larg-er than the few dozen studiesthat ultimately informed thepanel's conclusions." The number of scientif-ically credible studies of reading instructionis relatively small in comparison to the vol-ume of work that is done.

Unfortunately, lack of rigor and disrespectfor evidence in reading education are rein-forced by the passivity of education leaderswho feel that any idea that can muster a vig-orous advocate is legitimate and deserves tobe aired. The Association for Supervision andCurriculum Development published a mono-

graph in 1998 entitled Perspectives inReading Instruction. Rather than taking astand about which points of view weregrounded in evidence and which were with-out foundation, the ASCD published a dia-tribe by Ken Goodman against NationalInstitutes of Health research and a marketingpiece by Marie Carbo (a proponent ofLearning Styles, another misinformedapproach without scientific underpinnings)."These coexist in one slim volume with essaysby more credible writers, all prefaced withthe comment that "multiple voices...must beheard.'46 In October 1999, EducationalLeadership included an article entitled"Whole Language Works: Sixty Years ofResearch," by three authors who caricaturecode-emphasis instruction ("`Decodable text'

is the new trend inreading""); make statementsthat contradict every authori-tative research summary onreading ("[C]ontemporaryresearch on early readingstrongly endorses a holisticapproach""); and misrepre-sent the views of authorswho are referenced, such asCarol Chomsky.49 The fieldwould be better served byeditorial policies that resultin the reader's enlightenment,rather than policies that con-tribute to the reader's confu-sion.

Whole-language incarna-tions, such as Reading Recovery, covertlyembody whole-language ideas. The successand persistence of Reading Recovery (RR)exemplifies the power of ideology over evi-dence. RR is an expensive, first grade, one-on-one tutorial intervention approach that iscompatible with whole-language ideas. It ispromoted by a parent institute in Ohio thatwas founded to disseminate the ideas ofMarie Clay, a New Zealand educator. Withina structured lesson format, RR embraces

Unfortunately, lack ofrigor and disrespect for

evidence in readinginstruction are rein-

forced by the passivityof education leaders

who feel that any ideathat can muster a vigor-ous advocate is legiti-

mate and deserves to beaired.


22

many whole-language premises.5° The leadersof RR in the United States, Irene Fountas andGay Su Pinnell, are popular proponents of"guided reading" approaches and other class-room extensions of RR. In a 1999 newsletterfrom their institute, they describe a typicallesson, claiming that it is designed to buildthe competencies endorsed by the NationalResearch Council's 1998 report on preventingreading difficulties in young children.' In thesame piece, Fountas and Pinnell endorse run-ning records, predictable texts, incidentalphonics instruction, teaching children toguess at words from context and initial letter,the importance of cueing systems, and decod-ing by analogy. They argue that there shouldbe no predetermined sequence for decodinginstruction; decoding should be taught as stu-dents compose their own sentences and sto-ries.

New Zealand Professor William Tunmerand his colleagues have been carefully criti-cal of RR for a decade, producing one studyafter another that illuminates the flaws of theReading Recovery approach. Tunmer's groupmost recently conducted research commis-sioned by the New Zealand Ministry ofEducation and presented at the AmericanEducational Research Association." Theyasked basic questions that have never beensystematically investigated by the promoterswho profit from the program: Who succeedswith RR? Who does not? Are there short-term or long-term benefits? Will otherapproaches be more effective? Is the expensejustified? What happens to the students whodo not succeed?

Their findings, obtained under controlledand well-designed conditions of scientificinvestigation, were consistent with previousstudies. Success in RR was a function of stu-dents' entering phonological abilities.Participation in the program did not eliminateor reduce phonological deficiencies. Studentswith phonological difficulties did poorly. Theprogram did not produce accelerated readingperformance. One year later, the children's

reading was about one year below age-appro-priate levels, even though they had pro-gressed through the sequence of books usedin the RR program. Children who had notprogressed well showed declines in readingself-concept after RR, more negative percep-tions of their reading and spelling ability, andproblems with academic self-concept a yearlater. They also had more classroom behaviorproblems. In conjunction with previous stud-ies, Tunmer's group concluded that RR maybe more effective if greater emphasis isplaced on development and use of word-levelskills and strategies involving phonologicalinformation. Tunmer has reported severaltimes that direct, systematic instruction insound-symbol decoding is more effectivethan the incidental instruction used by RR. Inone study, the RR approach was 37 percentless efficient than the direct, systematicapproach because letter-to-phoneme knowl-edge is primarily responsible for driving thedevelopment of word-recognition skills. "

Have these reports caused RR's promot-ers or consumers to change their rationale,methodology, student-assessment practices,or requirements for teacher training?Evidently not. Although individuals andtraining sites may differ, the official line fromRR leaders remains virtually the same as ithas been for two decades. The institute con-tinues to teach a flawed conception of read-ing psychology and a methodology thatwould be significantly improved if it werealigned with the results of research.Regrettably, this has not happened. The resis-tance to change is difficult to understand, butit may simply reflect the expectation by RRleaders that consumers will not care about theresearch. So far, they have been right.

State standards and frameworks continueto reflect whole-language ideas. States' acad-emic standards commonly reflect prevailingeducational philosophies. Once established,they change slowly. Meanwhile, they influ-ence practice.

New Jersey's Language Arts Literacy


2 °

Curriculum Framework, passed in the fall of1998, is reminiscent of California's 1987framework. In the entire document, there isno directive for the systematic instruction ofsound-symbol decoding or knowledge ofother language structures. The reading objec-tives address only comprehension and higher-level text interpretation, with the exception of"Use print concepts in developmentallyappropriate ways." "Suggested activities to teachreading include pointing totext, reading it aloud, andestablishing "one-to-onematching." Cutting up thewords of the sentences andsequencing them is advised.Phonemic awareness is to betaught by finding rhymingwords in a familiar text.Phoneme identity, spellingcorrespondences, syllables,and meaningful parts of words (morphemes)are not to be the content of instruction at all,according to this document. Children in NewJersey apparently are expected to read byimprinting and osmosis. Similar expectationscharacterize the standards of Vermont, Ohio,and North Dakota, among others.

Even states with generally praiseworthystandards for language arts can sometimesslip when it comes to essentials of early read-ing instruction. Massachusetts' new stan-dards, for example, are excellent for thirdgrade and up, as judged by several reviewsby Achieve, Inc. and the Thomas B. FordhamFoundation." Students are expected to know

language structure at several levels, and toread a broad sampling of worthwhile litera-ture. The early literacy portion of the docu-ment, however, includes a sample lesson thatcould be taken from a whole-language hand-book." In this literature-focused lesson, thereis no instruction in sound-symbol relation-ships beyond initial consonant decoding, noinstruction in left-to-right sound blending,

and no control over thesound-symbol patternstaught. It is not explainedhow the children should learnto read other than guessingfrom context and an initialconsonant. Commendablethough the Bay State's newlanguage arts frameworkgenerally is, issues in earlyreading need clearer explica-tion lest they sow confusionin the primary classroom.

Indiana is another state whose standardsare now admirable except for some specificsof early reading. The Hoosier State's revisedEnglish Language-Arts Standards expect onlythat kindergarten children will "recognizeconsonant sounds that are the same or differ-ent at the beginning of spoken words andidentify the consonants that make differentsounds at the beginning of spoken words(Which word begins with the letter b? fish,ball, cat.)." Indiana is to be commended foraddressing the domain of phonological learn-ing, but sound blending, segmenting, and theassociation of sounds with symbols should beincluded in their standards, too.

States' academicstandards and frame-

works commonlyreflect prevailing

educationalphilosophies, includingwhole-language ideas.

What Next?Advocates for education reform and

improvement may be surprised that we havenot slain the monster of misinformed readinginstruction. After all, a half dozen major con-sensus documents on the research evidenceabout reading have been widely distributed,


digested, and converted into policy. Class-room practice and academic education, how-ever, are not changing fast enough for us toclaim that evidence-based teaching will pre-dominate in our schools at any time soon.

Whole language may have been dis-

24

proven by scholars, but it still lurks in manycorners of education practice: in textbooksfor teachers, instructional materials for class-room use, teacher-licensing requirements,courses and standards for teacher education,and the professional context in which teach-ers work. As a consequence, too many chil-dren are not doing as well as they could be,and others are falling by thewayside in beginning read-ing, never to get on track,even though this failure islargely preventable. Not allchildren are adversely affect-ed, to be sure; many childrenlearn to read in spite of howwe teach them, and manyteachers are teaching readingwell. Nevertheless, it is thosechildren who depend themost on valid and effectiveinstruction in school, includ-ing minority, low-income,immigrant, and inner-citychildren, who are most likely to be harmedby persistent whole-language ideology and itsmanifestations in practice."

Confronting and changing the legacy ofwhole language is a mission yet to be accom-plished. Righting reading instruction calls forcontinuing effort on eight separate fronts.

2. State assessments of reading and lan-guage arts should be calibrated toshow the effects of reading instructionas delineated in well-written statestandards.

3. State accountability systems shouldemphasize the attainment of grade-

appropriate reading, spelling,and writing skills by thirdgrade, so that actions can betaken quickly to (a) providemeaningful and effectiveremediation to the studentswho have fallen by the way-side; and (b) reorganize ordisband failing schools orprovide parents with alterna-tive placements for their chil-dren. To this end, the effortsof states such as Texas andVirginia to develop a validscreening tool for reading ingrades K-2 are laudable.

Minority, low-income,immigrant, and inner-city children are the

pupils most likely to beharmed by persistent

whole-languageideology and its

manifestations inpractice.

1. Every state should have language-artscontent standards and curricularframeworks for each grade fromkindergarten through third grade.These should be explicitly based onresearch findings on phonemic aware-ness, alphabetic skills, reading fluen-cy, beginning and advanced decodingskills, vocabulary, and comprehen-sion. California and Texas have doneespecially well in this regard andshould be emulatedbut even theyneed to ensure that practice followspolicy.

4. States should adopt rigorous licensingexaminations for new teachers andveteran teachers alike. States must beclear and specific in their delineationof research-based practice, so that lit-tle incentive remains for the perpetua-tion of unsupported ideas such asthose of whole language. Knowledgeof reading development, languagestructure, reading pedagogy, andassessments would seem minimallynecessary for effective, informedinstruction. Licensing exams shouldprobe actual mastery of specific com-ponents of reading instruction.Classroom practices at the schoollevel should be based on best practiceand be open to independent review byothers who are knowledgeable aboutthe issues.


25

5. Because state university readingdepartments have been the slowest tochange and the most tenaciously loyalto whole-language ideology, alterna-tive teacher-preparation programsshould be encouraged and supported.If disillusioned consumers are able tolook elsewhere for teachers who canpass a licensing exam and demon-strate their competence with students,entrenched academic departmentsmay feel more pressure to improve.

6. Traditional schools and programs ofeducation should be organized differ-ently. Professional preparation ofeffective teachers should be theirfocus. Faculty tenure would be abol-ished. Faculty would maintain posi-tions if they could successfully collab-orate with a team in the preparation ofcompetent teachers. Professionalschools for teaching would be part-ners with departments of core disci-plines including linguistics and psy-chology. Faculty members would beeligible for their role if they them-selves had been successful practition-ers in K-12 classrooms.

7. State-guided textbook adoptionsshould be regulated according to thealignment of the material withresearch evidence for what worksbest. Publishers should be required to


show for whom their product worksand under what conditions.

8. Journalists and policymakers need tountie the string and closely examinethe innards of instructional programsand packages that are offered in thename of "balanced" reading.

What children bring to the printed page,and to the task of writing, is knowledge ofspoken language. What must be learned isknowledge of the written symbols that repre-sent speech, and the ability to use those pro-ductively. Knowing the difference betweensacks and sax, past and passed, or their andthere, or knowing that antique says "anteek,"requires language awareness and attention todetail. Students who are not taught properlyare less able to sound out a new word when itis encountered, slower and less accurate atreading whole words, less able to spell, lessable to interpret punctuation and sentencemeaning, and less able to learn new vocabu-lary words from reading them in context.Students deserve to have sufficient under-standing of the language they speak, read,and write so that they can use it to communi-cate well. Ironically, whole language hasstood in the way of this accomplishment formany years. Today, its influence is still withus. If sufficient attention is promptly given tochanges such as those outlined above, tomor-row may yet be a different story.

26

Notes

' See Marilyn J. Adams, "The Progress of the Whole-Language Debate," Educational Psychologist29, no. 4 (1994): 217-222; and Michael Pressley, "State of the Science Primary-Grades ReadingInstruction or Whole Language?" Educational Psychologist 29, no. 4 (1994): 211-215.

2 See Learning First Alliance, "Every Child Reading," American Educator 22, no. 1-2 (1998): 61.

See National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of theScientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction(Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000): 9-11.

See Penny A. Freppon and Karin L. Dahl, "Balanced Instruction: Insights and Considerations,"Reading Research Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1998): 240-251.

See Ellen McIntyre and Michael Pressley, eds., Balanced Instruction: Strategies and Skills inWhole Language (Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon, 1996).

6 The National Reading Panel's report Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessmentof the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction,issued in April of 2000, provides a credible screening, analysis, and interpretation of the highestquality research on reading interventions.

' See Marilyn Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 1990); Michael Pressley, Reading Instruction that Works: The Case for BalancedTeaching (New York: Guilford Press, 1998); and Catherine E. Snow, M. Susan Burns, and PegGriffin, eds., Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Washington, DC: NationalAcademy Press, 1998).

8 See Steven A. Stahl and P.D. Miller, "Whole Language and Language Experience Approaches forBeginning Reading: A Quantitative Research Synthesis," Review of Educational Research 59, no.1(1989): 87-116.

9 See Karin L. Dahl and Patricia L. Scharer, "Phonics Teaching and Learning in Whole LanguageClassrooms: New Evidence from Research," The Reading Teacher 53 (2000): 584-594; HarveyDaniels, Steve Zemelman, and Marilyn Bizar, "Whole Language Works: Sixty Years of Research,"Educational Leadership 57, no. 2 (2000): 32-37; Kenneth S. Goodman, Phonics Phacts(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993); Kenneth S. Goodman, What's Whole in Whole Language?(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986); Margaret Moustafa, Beyond Traditional Phonics(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997); and Constance Weaver, "On Research and the Teaching ofPhonics," in Creating Support for Effective Literacy Education, ed. Constance Weaver, LorraineFillmeister-Krause, and Grace Vento-Zogby (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996), xv-xvii.

1° Kenneth S. Goodman, "Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game," Journal of the ReadingSpecialist 6 (1967): 126-135; and Frank Smith, "Making Sense of ReadingAnd of Reading


27

Instruction," Harvard Educational Review 47 (1977): 386-395.

" Frank Smith, Understanding Reading: A Psycho linguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning toRead, 2d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978).

12 A basal reader is a classroom reading textbook. It usually includes stories of graded difficulty,some control over the vocabulary that is introduced, and supportive lessons in various skills neces-sary for learning to read. Classrooms often have the same text for every student, even though stu-dents are grouped according to their reading levels for smaller group instruction.

13 See Daniels, Zemelman, and Bizar, "Whole Language Works"; and Debbie Powell and DavidHornsby, Learning Phonics and Spelling in a Whole Language Classroom (New York: ScholasticProfessional Books, 1993).

14 Idaho public television in April 2000 aired a program for kindergarten teachers that demonstratedthis technique.

'Powell and Hornsby, Learning Phonics and Spelling, 23.

16 Ibid., 43.

" 7 Ibid., 21.

18 The "mini-lesson" approach is pervasive in the products of major classroom basal reading pro-grams.

See Kerry Hempenstall, "Miscue Analysis: A Critique," Effective School Practices 17, no. 3(1999): 87-93.

20 Marilyn J. Adams, "The Three-Cueing System," in Literacy for All: Issues in Teaching andLearning, ed. Jean Osborn and Fran Lehr (New York: Guilford Press, 1998): 73-99.

21 In the California Reading Language Arts Framework, which was written under Bill Honig's termas state superintendent of public instruction in 1987, and which was in effect until 1997, teacherswere advised to cover up parts of words that children misread in order to encourage guessing fromcontext. Sounding out was characterized as the strategy of last resort.

22 A whole-language lesson and contrasting methods are portrayed in Snow, Burns, and Griffin,Preventing Reading Difficulties, 200-203.

23 Pressley, "State-of-the-Science," 213.

24 See Daniels, Zemelman, and Bizar, "Whole Language Works," 32-37.

25 Jack M. Fletcher and G. Reid Lyon, "Reading: A Research-Based Approach," in What's GoneWrong in America's Classrooms?, ed. Williamson M. Evers (Stanford, CA: Hoover InstitutionPress, 1998), 40-90.


28

" See Alvin M. Liberman, "The Reading Researcher and the Reading Teacher Need the RightTheory of Speech," Scientific Studies of Reading 3 (1999): 95-111.

27 See Linnea Ehri, "Phases of Development in Learning to Read Words by Sight," Journal ofResearch in Reading 18, no. 2 (1995): 116-125; Tom Nicholson, "Do Children ReadWords Betterin Context or in Lists? A Classic Study Revisited," Journal of Educational Psychology 83, no. 4(1991) 444-450; and William E. Tunmer and Wesley A. Hoover, "Phonological Decoding Skill andBeginning Reading," Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5 (1993): 161-179.

28 See Liberman, "The Reading Researcher."

29 See Fletcher and Lyon, "Reading: A Research-Based Approach."

3° See Phil Gough, "The Beginning of Decoding," Reading and Writing: An InterdisciplinaryJournal 5 (1993): 181-192.

3' See Steven Stahl, M.C. McKenna, and J.R. Pagnucco, "The Effects of Whole LanguageInstruction: An Update and Reappraisal," Educational Psychologist 29, no. 4 (1994): 175-185; andSteven Stahl and P.D. Miller, "Whole Language and Language Experience Approaches."

32 Bill Honig, who was superintendent of public instruction in California at the time, has sinceacknowledged the errors of this document, disavowed the philosophy on which it was based, andextensively revised his position on early reading instruction.

" E.D. Hirsch, in The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them (New York: Doubleday, 1996),p. 176, calls this "shooting the messenger" in his chapter on test evasion.

" See Marie M. Clay, The Early Detection of Reading Difficulties: A Diagnostic Survey andReading Recovery Procedures (Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books, 1985); and Kenneth S.Goodman, Miscue Analysis: Applications to Reading Instruction (Urbana, IL: National Council ofTeachers of English, 1973).

" See Hempenstall, "Miscue Analysis," 87-93.

36 See James W. Chapman, William E. Tunmer, and Jane E. Prochnow, Success in ReadingRecovery Depends on the Development of Phonological Processing Skills, report to the Ministry ofEducation of New Zealand, August 1999 (revised research report for phase three of contractER35/299/5; presented to the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, April,1998).

" Dahl and Scharer, "Phonics Teaching and Learning," 588.

38 For many years, The Reading Teacher contained almost no articles with any positive reference tophonics, vocabulary, or word analysis; at least the topic is once again permissible, but it is limitedto discussion of the exemplary whole-language classroom.

" See Louisa C. Moats, "The Missing Foundation in Teacher Education," American Educator 19,


29

no. 9 (1995): 43-51.

4° John R. Anderson, "ACT: A Simple Theory of Complex Cognition,"American Psychologist 51,no. 4 (1996): 359.

41 Ibid., 355-365.

42 See James Hoffman, "The De-democratization of Schools and Literacy in America," The ReadingTeacher 53 (2000): 616-623; and Cathy Roller, "The International Reading Association Respondsto a Highly Charged Policy Environment," The Reading Teacher 53 (2000): 626-636. Hoffmandecries the efforts of policymakers to "control" reading education because "mandates" about read-ing education threaten democracy by taking power away from classroom teachers.

u Dahl and Scharer, "Phonics Teaching and Learning," 584-94.

" See National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read, 1, 7, 9, 12, 13.

45 For a critique of Marie Carbo's "learning styles" theory, see Steven Stahl, "Different Strokes forDifferent Folks? A Critique of Learning Styles," American Educator 23, no. 3 (1999): 27-31.

" Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Perspectives on Reading Instruction(Alexandria,VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998).

47 Harvey Daniels, Steve Zeinelman, and Marilyn Bizar, "Whole Language Works: Sixty Years ofResearch, Educational Leadership 57, no. 2 (2000): 32.

48 Ibid., 36.

49 Ibid., 35-36.

" See Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, "How and Why Children Learn About Sounds, Letters,and Words in Reading Recovery Lessons," The Running Record: A Review of Theory and Practicefor Reading Recovery Teachers 12, no. 1 (1999): 1-14.

51 Ibid.

52 See Chapman, Tunmer, and Prochnow, "Success in Reading Recovery."

" William E. Tunmer and W.A. Hoover, "Phonological Skill and Beginning Reading."

54 New Jersey State Department of Education, New Jersey Language Arts Literacy CurriculumFramework (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Department of Education, 1998), 254.

55 Lynn Olson, "Rating the Standards," Education Week 18, no. 17 (1999): 107-09. See also ChesterE. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petri lli, eds., The State of State Standards 2000 (Washington, DC: TheThomas B. Fordham Foundation, 2000), 68; and Sandra Stotsky, State English Standards: AnAppraisal of English Language-Arts/Reading Standards in 28 States (Complete Edition)(Washington, DC: The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1997), 19, 88-90.


30

56 Massachusetts Department of Education, Massachusetts English Language Arts CurriculumFramework (Boston: Massachusetts Department of Education, 1997), 17.

"Barbara R. Foorman, David J. Francis, /Jack M. Fletcher, Chris Schatschneider, and P. Mehta,"The Role Of Instruction in Learning to Read: Preventing Reading Failure in At-Risk Children,"Journal of Educational Psychology 90 (1998): 1-15.


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