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Lucy Calkins’ Criticism of Reading First is Misinformed
Posted January 15, 2020
By Dr. Dale Webster, Chief Academic Officer, CORE
Recently, there have been many responses to Lucy Calkins’ essay ”No One Gets to Own the Term, Science of Reading.” Many have responded with strong disagreement to her point of view. Two of the responses are very informative and can be found here and here. More disputes to her essay can be found here. Interestingly, none of the responses that I have seen to date address Calkins’ inaccurate attack on the Reading First initiative, which was the academic cornerstone of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While there are criticisms of the NCLB Act, in fact, many educators and those directly involved with Reading First have argued that the Reading First Initiative was one of the strongest components of NCLB.Calkins makes the following statements about Reading First.
Instead, the experiment involved tens of millions of kids. It was called Reading First, the reading instructional program for K-3 mandated in schools funded by No Child Left Behind….involved a set of top-down mandates for intensive phonics instruction that resembled what the science of reading people today are supporting. The mandates included not only intensive systematic phonics based on “the science of reading” but also an unbalanced reliance on highly decodable texts, to the exclusion of trade books…The results of Reading First were not good…the problem with Reading First was not that it taught phonics, but that phonics was largely all it taught.
Calkins makes several factual errors in her statements above which are largely based on anecdotal musings from many who didn’t like Reading First.
First, she refers to Reading First as an “experiment.” Reading First was a way to provide districts with an option to improve reading instruction and achievement based on the prior 25 years of scientific research on effective reading instructional practices. It is incorrect to call Reading First a “mandate”; in fact, districts opted in to the program by applying to their respective states for the funding. Only about 10% of the nation’s elementary schools received Reading First funding but all schools were impacted by NCLB. Some districts rightly chose not to apply for Reading First funding because they knew the guidelines were not aligned to their approaches to teaching reading. Of course, with receipt of funding, districts were required to follow the guidelines of the grant. In contrast, what was an experiment were school districts and states mandating whole language instruction during the late 1980s and 1990s, causing declines in reading achievement across the country. There was and still is little to no evidence of whole language’s efficacy, especially with students who are likely to struggle to learn to read.
The other false claim Calkins makes is that phonics was all Reading First taught. The Reading First initiative was based on the National Reading Panel Report findings which explicated the five essential components of reading – phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. First of all, Calkins’ statement that Reading First “taught” phonics is just poor writing (coming from a writing guru, that is ironic) – Reading First was an initiative not a teacher. More importantly, however, Reading First required schools to teach all five essential components of reading. It did not require only intensive phonics.
I was intimately involved with the professional development efforts of the Reading First initiatives in both Texas and California, two states with the largest Reading First funding. In both of these states there was never a “phonics only” approach to professional development. Both states stressed implementation of scientifically research-based instruction using high quality, research-based instructional materials. Certainly, phonics and phonemic awareness were emphasized in K-2 initially since those were elements about which teachers had little knowledge and lacked preparation to teach those skills. However, they also were always supposed to include vocabulary development and reading comprehension, in the earliest grades through read alouds. Prior to the early 2000s when Reading First began (and arguably to this day), teachers have had poor preservice training in phonics and phonemic awareness so it was necessary to emphasize these components. However, to say that the initiative itself promoted only phonics is untrue. Yes, there was anecdotal evidence that some schools were spending more time than recommended on these two components, but it never was a conclusion from a program evaluation that this was a widespread phenomenon in all Reading First schools across the country.
Lastly, Calkins states that Reading First didn’t work based on the poorly designed USDOE study to argue her point. In fact, California’s Reading First evaluation in Years 4, 5, and 6 concluded that the initiative was effective. See the italicized statements below from the executive summary of the Year 6 report. The full Year 6 report can be found here.
On the grade 2 CST achievement metric Reading First schools have grown 30 scale score points since 2002, indicating significant growth for grade 2 in California since the program began.
The migration of students out of “Below and Far Below Basic” is more than twice what it is for non-Reading First schools.
The grade 5 movement of students out of “Below or Far Below Basic” in Reading First schools is more than twice that seen in non-Reading First schools, three times more in high implementing schools. This finding indicates a sustainable and replicable effect of the program once students no longer have grade-level access to it due to funding and programmatic limitations (K-3).
There were several other states that shared similar data improvement stories as a result of Reading First – Alabama, Washington, Texas, Arizona, and the Bureau of Indian Education to name a few.
In summary, no matter what Lucy Calkins says, Reading First was a successful initiative that got killed due to politics and disgruntled vendors, a very sad end to the most successful federal education initiative.
12 responses to “Lucy Calkins’ Criticism of Reading First is Misinformed”
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Recently, there have been many responses to Lucy Calkins’ essay ”No One Gets to Own the Term, Science of Reading.” Many have responded with strong disagreement to her point of view. Two of the responses are very informative and can be found 
Totally agree with the op-ed….Reading First helped many schools provide needed explicit instruction to all students.
Totally agree with the op-ed….Reading First helped many schools provide needed explicit instruction to all students.. Thank you Dale!!
Hats off to all my RTA sisters and RF schools💚
Couldn’t have said it better! Reading First impacted so many children in a positive way!!! Educators today still discuss the effectiveness of learning how to explicitly teach all 5 components!
Excellent analysis Dale! As a member of the statewide, K-3 Reading First professional development in Florida, we focused on ALL five components of reading instruction equally. As stated in the op-ed many seasoned teachers were clueless when it came to providing explicit sequential phonological awareness skills instruction, which includes phonemic awareness and phonics! Most teachers believed children would learn through osmosis and lots of time…years. . It didn’t work then, nor will it ever. Personally, I do not understand why so many continue to defy scientific research. Thanks again for an excellent op-ed!
I agree completely! I was a literacy leader and eventual principal of our school in Reading First years. It was NOT all phonics! We had success! Students reading improved! Teacher instruction improved due to intense PD for teachers that the grant allowed. In additional we were able to purchase quality hands on materials through the grant that otherwise our small rural school in Tennessee would not be able to afford. Being reflective, one thing that I think Reading First put too much emphasis on fluency. For some teachers we just taught students to be speed readers to get their number of words- I see many parallels of Science of Reading agenda and Reading First which honestly excites me because I know that students improved under the Reading First Model!
Reading First was an excellent program to begin the journey toward helping students acquire reading skills they needed, in addition to motivating them to grow as readers. I miss the program. Now it seems everyone thinks they have the best reading program but as a reading teacher, I am not seeing results. Go back to what really works – for the sake of our future.
Good piece, Dale.
People also need to be aware that prior to RF there was no common or reliable measure of reading achievement nation-wide (a deplorable condition). For all its sticks and carrots, it was an important step in national accountability for literacy instruction. Bush as president was derided for many language processing gaffes that would be characteristic of dyslexia – and the first lady was a reading teacher – an additional context, perhaps.
Results are usually “averaged” so there are winners and losers. Here are two federal reports with additional information.
The summary from IES that said comprehension did not improve as a result of Reading First is here: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094038/summ_a.asp
And the OIG report about the failures of the US Department of Education in the Reading First Grant Application Process is here: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/aireports/i13f0017.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3_OAXHElRQUSaESFH6QgGmc1v5cWju9CEn_dCXn8lF28zLp1FzgINsiGA
I was the reading coach in a Bureau of Indian Education school which implemented the BIE Reads (Reading First) model with fidelity and our results were phenomenal. We were in restructuring when we began, and within two years, we went from 21% proficiency on the state assessment to 61% proficiency. Our DIBELS results were excellent, and we applied the same MTSS framework to our math program with equal success. Reading First definitely worked when it was implemented the way that it was supposed to be implemented. Keep in mind that our results were achieved in a reservation school with a 100% minority population with 100% free and reduced lunches.
As a Reading First coach and reading teacher, I can say the problem with the initiative was that it was poorly administered in many of the districts. It is regrettable that politics should weigh so heavily in public education. We had many gains, but to this day, I am still explaining to teachers why the fluency test of DIBELS was not a measure of comprehension. My proof that not all of the initiative was administered with fidelity. I appreciate your article as one who worked hard and tirelessly to make the initiative work.
The educational value of The Reading First Initiative is beyond measure. It provided teachers with the tools necessary to actually learn how to teach reading—something that colleges do not offer. It then held those teachers accountable for application and follow through. I was a LETRS trainer during that time I still have teachers telling me today, that they didn’t know about the importance of the 5 components of reading until attending PD opportunities offered by the Reading First Initiative. Thank you MODESE.
I was one of the writers and led the implementation of our district’s Reading First grant. This model, while being extremely difficult to implement, led to providing the best professional development, materials, and ongoing classroom coaching for teachers leading to phenomenal results for our students. Teachers- new and veteran- by the end of the first year, said they had never taught a child HOW to read before this initiative. We maintained all of the efforts until the money ran out, as we are a poor, rural district. The effects still linger to some degree among the teachers that were a part of the initial intensive training, but as we have implemented comprehension based programs to teach our state’s reading standards, we are experiencing much less proficient reading by our students. The Reading First model worked. There were MANY working parts required to create the success we had during this initiative that made it work. I am hopeful that our state’s new/renewed focus on foundational reading will get us going back in the right direction so that we can “teach them all to read”.