Presenting “Sold a Story”
32:15 Share

This episode is brought to by progressive insurance. You ever find yourself playing the budgeting game well with the name your Price tool from progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try IT at progressive dot com, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliate pricing coverage match limited by state law not available in all states.

Hey, in the dark listeners, it's madeleine. I'm coming to you today because I wanted to bring you another podcast I think you would really enjoy. It's done by a former colleague of mine, an amazing reporter named Emily handful erd in american public media.

And it's all about how the way that so many children in our country are talked to read is just wrong. This reporting has had a huge impact. It's now changing the way that reading is taught in classrooms across the country.

The pot test is called sold a story. And we're going to play the first episode for you here. Here's the show.

Guy dog lead very interesting lives for ten or twelve years. They are in charge of guiding a blind person. I got this recording from the U.

S. Department of education. They give a reading test every two years to a sample of kids.

Most guy dogs are born at a.

This is a fourth greater who did well in the test, reading a passage about .

guide dogs trained large for three month.

But most kids don't do well on this test.

the.

In fact, a third of fourth graders read so poorly, they sound more .

like this judge dogs would read very, very interesting. This child gets through .

only a fraction of the passage and can't read several words that are key to understanding what's going on, wounds like guide .

and blind and.

One in three kids in fourth grade reads like this. How did that happen? I'm Emily handford. I'm an education reporter. And about five years ago, I started to get really interested in why so many kids are having a hard time learning to read. And what I discovered is that in schools all over this country and other parts of the world, to kids are not being taught how to read.

Schools think they're teaching .

kids to read, of course they do. But IT turns out there is a big body of scientific research about reading and how kids learn to do IT. This research shows there are important skills that all kids need to learn to become good readers. And in lots of schools, they aren't being .

taught these skills.

Over the past few years, I produce a series of radio documentaries and articles about this, and the response was like nothing i've ever experienced in my career, thousands of emails and messages and posts on social media. And there are basically two kinds of things people were saying. The first was, I know, I know.

I've been trying to tell people this for years. The other response was, I had no idea. This is what I heard from lots of teachers.

They had no idea. They weren't teaching kids how to read. What i've been trying to figure out is why? Why didn't they know why having schools been teaching children how to read?

And I have an answer.

This is sold story, a podcast from a reports. I've got a lot to tell you in this podcast, but i'm going to tell you the answer to the question. Right now, kids are not being taught how to read because for decades, teachers have been sold an idea about reading and how children learn to do IT.

And that idea is wrong. The people who have been selling this idea, I don't have any reason to believe they thought I was wrong. I think they wanted what I think everyone wants.

They wanted kids to learn how to read. They wanted kids to love reading. But they believed so deeply in their idea about how to do that, that they somehow ignored or explained away a whole lot of evidence that showed the idea was wrong.

And they went on to make a lot of money in this podcast. We're going to focus on one publishing company and four of its top authors. They are not the only ones who been selling this wrong idea about reading, but they have been the most successful at IT.

Chances are you have no idea who this company and these people are. Unless you've worked in an elementary school any time in the last twenty years or so, then you probably know exactly who i'm talking about. SHE was like a rockstar walking into that building.

If beyond, say, came and gave a private concert to my district, IT would not have band a bigger deal.

For many of my teachers, their books on teaching reading became much tabs for teachers .

used to call them my bibs. Yeah, I kept IT of my bible.

Everything that I did was based off of their work. A generation of teachers believed what these authors and this company .

were telling them. They framed a picture of reading instruction that seemed beautiful, like softly lit rooms. Kids, we're going to have cozy nux where they were curling up with a good book.

IT got your heart along with your mind. But a key idea in their work has been disproven before some of today's teachers were even born. A lot of teachers didn't know that what i'm haunted by is when IT wasn't working, I blamed IT on children. I mean, I feel like I harmed kids, to be honest with you, because I didn't give them what they needed. Teachers and parents and policymakers are waking up to the fact that there is a problem.

We're all following this kind of the united approach.

How do we get into this mess?

Why are we doing in this way?

In this podcast, we're going to investigate where this wrong idea about reading came from, how it's harming kids and why a company and four of its top authors have been able to sell IT for so long. I've been working on the story with another reporter. His name is Christopher peek.

We've interviewed more than one hundred and twenty five people. We've requested records from nearly two hundred school districts. We scoured red university archives and libraries as far away as new zealand.

We found old video tapes, and bata used V, C, R, so we can watch them. We're going to get to that, tell you about the authors in the company and what we learned about them. But in this first episode, i'm gonna tell you about how kids are being taught in classrooms where this wrong idea about reading has taken root. Okay, so we're recording.

okay. I'm current atoms. I live in south king's road islands. I have two kids, six and two. Boy, a girl.

Her son is the older one. His name is charlie. When SHE sent him off to kindergarten in the fall of twenty nineteen, current had no concerns. One of the reasons SHE in her husband had moved to sell kings down is everyone told them the schools were great. SHE had no idea how her son school was teaching reading.

Who thinks about that? I don't know how to teach your childhood ream. So I just assume that the children I sent to school would come back to me literate because that's what school does, right?

At first, everything seemed fine. Charlie would come home with these little books, the same book every day for a week.

And i'd practice that book, can send IT back.

And that's what we did. They were directions for the parents about how to read these books with their children.

IT was, like, read the book to the child first, and then eventually the child will have practiced enough that they've read IT. IT would be great, you know, and he would listen to me read IT pay very close attention to what I was saying, repeat that. And if IT was a new book, mommy.

you read at me first. Charlie wasn't interested in trying to read books. SHE hadn't already read to him new .

books like break to m out.

He didn't want to do that. He was a little concerned. Maybe he was just memorizing the books.

There were pretty simple stories with predictable patterns. Sentences like, I like to play with a train. I like to play with my dog. Charlie was able to read these books, but was he really reading? SHE wasn't sure, but the school said he was doing great.

They were telling me he was doing fine. They were telling me he was on level.

When charlie did well on something in school, the teacher would send home a little note.

and he would get them all the time for, like, great reading. You would get him in his old .

backpack and I feel like what your drinks. So great.

And then march of twenty, twenty, the pandemic. Suddenly, Karen was in kindergarten, two watching as charlie and his classmates were being taught over zoom.

So we sit together and I participate. No, I help. A mixture can unmet themselves and all that stuff.

Current stayed home. Mom SHE wasn't jugged online school with another job, so he was watching pretty closely. And the reading instruction seemed kind of odd to her.

They gave us like these strategies to follow.

These were things kids were supposed to do when they came to award. They didn't know strategies to figure out the word. There were things like, look at the picture. Look at the first letter of the world. Think of a word that makes sense. Karen wanted to tell charlie to sound out the word, but handouts coming from school or telling her that wasn't a good idea, but sounding out words should be a last resort.

So I was like, okay, well, this is a new different way. And i'm sure they understand what they're doing because I do remember sounding out. I do remember that activity.

but charlie and his classmates were being taught to use these other strategies.

We're going to look at our book, Zelda and I ve either runaway.

This is a video charlies teacher had her students watched during zoom school in first grade. It's not charlie's teacher in the video, but it's a lesson from the curriculum the school district was using.

I'm gna read a little bit of this story to you, and if I get stuck on a word, I want you to try to help me figure out what that work could be.

The teacher reads the story. The kids can see the words on the screen. They're following along as he reads. And then the teacher comes to a word that she's covered up with a little yellow sticky note.

Okay, so we're going to stop right here on this covered word.

And the teacher says, what could this would be? Let's look at the picture.

We're going to see if the picture helps us to figure out what that word would be.

The kids can't see the word is covered with the sticky note. So there is no way they can sound IT out. They're just trying to figure out what the word could be based on what's going on in the story.

If we think about what's happening so far in the story, we know Zelda and ivy dad MIT cucumber sandwich es for lunch and although and I V didn't want to eat the sandwich es, so they ran away, and now they think their moment .

and dad will will what zea and iv ran away, and now they think their mom and dad will school them, find them.

Do you think that could work? Could be the word miss.

miss them.

be the word miss, because now that they are gone, maybe their parents will miss them.

The teacher asks the kids to think about whether miss could be the word, using the strategies they.

they ve been taught. Let's do our triple check and see. Does IT make sense? Does IT sound right?

How about the last part of our triple check? Does that look right? Let's uncover the word and see if IT looks right.

The teacher lifts up the sticky note, and indeed.

the word is, miss IT looks right to good job, very good job. Go ahead and click on the next side so you can practice this strategy. On our next part of our story.

this seemed weird to current. Why have kids guessed the word? Why not have them look at the word and try to actually read IT?

And I sit, and my sense teacher is like, this isn't how we learned how to be like, meaning me and her. And I just like keep, like nagging at me, like at the back of my mind. Like, this isn't how we did IT right? Like, this can't be right, right?

What made at all weirder is that the kids were actually being taught some things about how to sound out words. The teacher did some phonics lessons, but when I came to reading books, all that instruction seem to go out the window. The books the kids were supposed to read had all kinds of words with spelling patterns they hadn't been taught.

So for example, they were giving him h. IT was at Christmas time, and IT was from the book. Chicken super rice.

Chicken soup with rice is a book by Morrisania. c. That was turned into a song by Carol cam. I'd loved this song when I was a kid. IT goes through every month of the year, january through december.

And it's like in december, I will be a bobbled bangled Christmas tree and they wanted him to read that I just was like how he knew .

there was no way charlie could read, bobbled or bangled or even guess those words by using the pictures. It's possible korean would have just brushed all this off. Whatever he'll figured that out.

The school says he's doing fine, but he also had to give charlie a reading assessment at home. Not something apparent would Normally be asked to do. But this was copied.

and I wasn't allowed to read IT to him first, and I couldn't help him in any way. I just I could point to the words for him and that was he had to read .

SHE gave him the test. They're sitting in their kitchen. Charlie, two year old sister, is playing in the background, and Charles has to read a book called how things move.

How things move.

This is that reading .

assessment. Korean recorded IT. Here's the sentence .

charlie is trying to read. This toy moves when you push IT. There is a picture in the book of .

a girl pushing a truck.

Charlie is grasping for straws. He has no idea how to read most of the words in this book. Some of the words he is saying are not even on the page.

IT was just like I popping and I went into my bedroom and cried.

And then SHE went to her computer, and he started googling what was this way that her kid was being taught how to read. And SHE found some of the articles and documentaries I had written.

That's when I was like a realization that what is, oh my god, what's up? SHE tried .

talking to some other parents, and they kind of looked to me like.

I wasn't saying their .

kids were doing fine or so they thought, because that's what current had thought too. Then he started posting about her experience on twitter.

There were parents who were like, oh my god, like this is my kid. This is happening to me. Like this is happy to me. And I am in chicago, I am in california, or i'm in wherever else.

IT didn't seem like they were really teaching him to read.

This is one of those parents .

seem like they were teaching him to sound like they can read.

I contacted this parent after I saw his post on twitter. His name is legal. He lives in new york city.

And in the middle of covet finally vaccinated, I hoped, on a train from dc, where I live. And I meti on the upper, each side of manhattan. We're picking lease daughter up from school. Her name is zi, and she's just about to finish first grade. SHE goes to the public school that a few blocks from their apartment, the school was using the same reading curriculum that charlie .

school was using. All right, i'm supposed to meet catherin in the middle. Turtle in park is a .

gorgeous spring day and where .

in our way to the park around the corner from so we school, the park is full of kids and parents and nAnnies. The sprinklers are on. The children are running around.

We're in one of the richest zip codes in the united states. Though he goes to a school with a great reputation. You'd think you'd be taught how to read, but that's not what lei was seeing when the pandemic he lost his job. So when though I was at home doing zoom school, he was there watching everything just like her was .

I would hear the reading, and I would hear the other kids reading.

This was the first time we talked. I was at home and he was at home. And the audio quality isn't very good.

They weren't reading. They were doing what the teachers told them and never just guessing. I mean, there's no two ways about IT. They were guessing and I just thought like, okay, well, eventually they guess their way to being able to read, I assume.

But IT wasn't happening for zi. SHE didn't seem to be getting IT, and he was frustrated. Lei went to the internet. He came up with the reporting I had done too. He followed the footnotes, started reading some of the research himself, and he was shocked, confused, concerned. He tried to talk to the other parents at the park about what was going on with reading instruction at their school.

A couple of parents were like, yeah, I know i'm just so frustrated that I can .

then deal with IT, but for the most part, people responded to him the way they to current.

That was almost like saying, I saw alien, I saw the ship, and you have to believe me, right? Like, like, yeah, OK.

No one wants to believe their child's school isn't teaching kids how to read in a school with a great reputation on the upper, each side of manhattan, lee says. If he hadn't been sitting there or watching the instruction, he and his wife probably would have thought there was something wrong with joe SHE wasn't learning to read because he had a problem. We probably .

would be like, okay, what's wrong with her? Like, let's get her somehow. Let's take her to, you know, councillors and psychologists and hearing experts and seeing experts and figure all the stuff out.

But he didn't think the problem was with soi. He didn't think he had a reading disability. The problem was he wasn't being taught, had to read. So he decided to teach her himself. More on that after a break.

Hey, podcast listeners, i'm Chris macco, food director of bon appetite and eat curious and host of the dinner S O S podcast. Every week on dinner S O S, we help listeners tackle cooking chAllenges.

I cannot manage pork and like any fashion.

And with all the big cooking holidays coming up, there is a lot of home cooks who need our help.

We're doing a thankful skiving with fifteen friends, and the friend with the biggest house is staying. But unfortunately, that house also has a tiny tiny's kitchen.

Christmas morning, I flip them over, walked away, and one roof collapsed onto the floor. Luckily, I come prepared with the over fifty thousand recipes and the bond appetite apache ous archives, plus my incredible COO hosts from the test kitchen and beyond.

I was almost over excited about the options that we had.

There were so many and so many options too. Okay, great.

nothing. A great place.

Listen to and follow dinner SOS. Whatever you get your podcasts. Happy cooking.

In the summer of twenty twenty one, on an unseasonably cool day for washington, D. C, I went to the Georgetown public library. I'm here to meet one of the children's librarians.

Her name is roof fits. She's doing story time for pre scholars outside. On a saturday morning, our first book was requested last week, the monster at the end of this book, starting lovable furry Robert.

Hello, everybody. The children are quiet and adorable, sitting on little carpet squares wearing colorful masks to keep the virus at bay. I came here to see roof fits because i've been talking to a friend of hers, a former teacher, who is now a private reading to her.

We were talking about the perception that it's mostly kids from poor families who struggle to learn how to read. And SHE said, go talk to roof because she's a librarian in one of the richest neighborhood, washington. And parents are coming to her all the time and asking, do you have a book I can use to teach my child to read? I've had so many interactions with highly educated parents who were then told, like my child, he's behind and there's all this guilt.

And like, what if I not done? SHE says there is a big belief out there that kids just naturally learn to read. If their parents read to them enough, when you ask them, what is the child been learning at school?

A lot of IT is just practice reading, no instruction, and how to read, we're just gonna practice and you're just gonna gure IT out. Some kids do figure IT out they don't need much instruction, but a whole bunch of research shows this is not actually true for most kids. They need to be taught how to read.

IT doesn't happen naturally through exposure to books, ruth says. IT comes as a shock to a lot of families when they realize schools aren't teaching their kids how to read. Suddenly they realized they have to teach their kids themselves or hire a tutor, which he says a lot of them do, but not everyone has the money to hire a tutor or the time to do the teaching themselves. And what you heard about the way charlie and zoe were being taught, that can actually harm kids. Those word rating strategies can create bad habits that are really hard to break.

He doesn't look at all the letters and words. He doesn't look at all the words and senses. And reading is miserable for him.

This is Kenny aldin. SHE lives in california. SHE was in her car when we talked, waiting for her kids who are at socket practice. SHE has two boys who are twelve and fourteen at the time. It's her Younger one she's worried about.

He omits words, the ads, words, hill, substitute a word that makes sense in the context that has a few of the same letters as the actual word. And just cruise right on .

SHE gives an example. He was reading out loud and the word was irrepressible, but he said, irresponsible.

And I ve got so many examples like that just the other day. The word was misguided. And he said, miss judged.

He said, effective. When IT says efficient, I could give examples. From now until forever.

these kinds of mistakes can really get in the way. When IT comes to understanding what you read, a middle school teacher gave me the example of a kid who thought that in nineteen thirty nine, poland invited the germans into their country. That's a lot different from what really happened. The germans invaded poland.

What's going on with my son is that he was made to feel successful by not looking at all the letters in the words he learned.

those strategies, things like look at the first letter, use the picture, think of a word that makes sense. That's what he was taught, and that's what he did.

And so that habit of not looking at the words just continued on. He got farther and farther behind as a reader and writer, and he kept .

doing .

the same thing until we are where we are now.

He's a kid who doesn't like reading and doesn't like school. He's not fail. Kenny says he does okay.

His test scores are actually pretty good, but he can't spell. He does everything in his power to avoid reading and writing. The idea of him going to high school makes Kenny really anxious as we're talking. She's looking out the window of a car toward the field where her kids are playing soccer. She's full of regret because he knew something was wrong when her son was little SHE knew.

I always knew I was a problem. And maybe there was a time when I should have just stopped everything just, I don't know, a taken leave of absence for marker or something and just fixed IT, but I didn't SHE in.

Her son's other mom thought about sending him to a different school, but all the public schools where they live in berkely, california taught reading the same way. There was no getting away. SHE was just kind of hoping he would all work out, and he didn't. He stuck with the strategies he was taught, and he never learned how to read very well.

So we come over here for a second. Let's look at the S I O. And stuff that we did before .

i'm back with lean zai on the up east side of manhattan. Lee is showing me some of the materials he used to teach, so we had to read.

So this is um S I N. And we did toon before. So i'd look at this word. What is this word?

An addition?

Yeah, that's right. What is this word we're .

in their apartment is a tiny one bedroom. When he decided he was gone to teach so we to read, he scowered the internet for resources, taught some things about how to sound out words, and got what are known as decoded books.

Do you remember what I felt like the first time we read a decoding book?

Kind of hard?

Yes, a decoded is a book with words that have spelling patterns. A child has been taught so SHE can try to read the words. SHE doesn't have to guess them.

And we started reading that book. You, I said, have a decal book book I want to read IT and let's trying reading IT you like OK, okay. And we started reading IT.

And I had to stop you after fifty four pages because you read fifty four pages of IT. Remember that? Yeah, I think both of us were kind of bone away, right?

Best dinner ever.

Yeah, he was so fun to read. Wasn't, yeah.

Give any books you can read to me. Now, what are you reading?

I'm this army. There is, there are fully fun.

We read a little bit to me. How do you feel about 呀？

Just go really quick OK.

I'll stay here.

Get up seeking good though.

He sketches passed her dad across their apartment to her bedroom. And then she's back with her book.

This is the but to.

And he starts reading.

I decided to walk scary to school today. One thing about Sally is that SHE really wait. scary. Whatever really likes to top zai is .

still learning. But at the end of first grade, she's clearly on her way to becoming a good reader. Kids who are not on this path by the end of first grade rarely catch up.

And that's because of this thing that's been dubbed the Matthew effect. It's a biblical reference. Basically, when IT comes to reading, the rich get richer.

If you get off to a good start, you tend to like reading more. You tend to do IT more. And the more you read, the Better you get a reading.

But the opposite can happen. You don't get off to a good start. Reading is confusing and frustrating, and you don't really like that though we didn't get off to a good start with reading. And then her dads swooped in .

and change that the square square.

Zi was lucky, and charlie was too, because his mom, Karen, did exactly what he did after that disastrous reading assessment. When he realized charlie had no idea how to read the words, SHE decided to teach her her herself. SHE went to the internet, SHE bought books, and he learned pretty easily, which tells you that chari wasn't struggling because he has a reading disability. He was struggling .

because he wasn't .

being taught, just like zoey.

I shudder to think what would be if I hadn't been home all this time in seeing IT. You know.

it's possible, though, we would have been fine, and Shirley, too, if their parents hadn't intervened. Some kids do eventually put IT all together. They don't need much instruction.

But sixty five percent of fourth greater in this country are not proficient readers, according to that test I told you about at the beginning of the episode, scores on that test have been terrible for decades. And the problem is even worse when you look beyond the average and focus on specific groups of children. The most alarming statistic, eighty two percent of black forth graders are not proficient readers. That's more than eight and ten black children.

I think a lot of people just expect that some kids will .

never read what korean Adams just said. Lots of people have said this to me. Reading scores have been so low for so long that many people have come to accept that this is just the way things are, not something schools can do much about. Current adam says what she's learned over the past couple of years is that if you want to make sure your children can read, you should teach them yourself.

That's like such a messed up way to have a public school system in this country. Public goals should be like this sacred trust. I mean, to give you my child and you're going to teach him how to read. And that shadow for me that was broken.

SHE drafted an email about all this to the principal of her son's school, but SHE didn't end up sending IT because SHE likes the school. He likes the teachers. SHE doesn't want to be the problem parent telling them they're doing something wrong. And SHE doesn't really think this is their fault.

Like, I really don't blame teachers.

Teachers all over this country think they're doing the right thing. They're teaching reading the way they're curriculum and materials tell them to. And the people who are selling those materials are trusted, revered, considered red, the nation's top experts. When IT comes to teaching reading, not everything those experts are promoting is wrong, but something is one really important idea about how kids learn to read. In the next episode, i'm going to tell you about this idea where I came from and what's .

wrong with that.

You can hear the rest of the series right now. Just open up your podcast APP in search for sold a story or visit sold a story that org.

From P R X.