To tackle declining reading outcomes, legislators may opt for carrots, not sticks.
House lawmakers are backing away from proposals requiring schools to use a specific kind of reading instruction and implement mandatory dyslexia screenings after receiving pushback from both school officials and some experts. Instead, updated legislation under consideration in the House Education Committee would give school districts modest grants to boost reading interventions.
“We’ve had an awful lot of people that have indicated that (screenings) might be something that makes people more confident that it’s being addressed,” said Committee Chair Kate Webb, D-Shelburne. “But really the thing that’s going to make the difference is to have the right instruction going on the ground.”
Slumping reading scores have prompted state legislators to return to the subject of literacy, nationwide, as well as in Vermont.
Dyslexia advocates, in particular, have been pushing for screenings and a more phonics-centric curriculum, emphasizing a method of teaching that connects sounds and letters.
Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French, too, supports a mandatory screening in kindergarten. In testimony to lawmakers, French also recommended that reading scores be used in superintendent evaluations, and that school boards publish an annual monitoring report on student literacy outcomes.
The topic has mired legislators in the so-called reading wars, a longstanding and bitter debate about how best to help children who struggle to read. On one side are the proponents of “structured literacy,” which emphasizes phonics instruction, and on the other side are those who support “balanced literacy” which includes phonics but also argues children must be taught to love reading with rich and relevant texts.
The structured literacy and phonics camp have seen a resurgence in popularity lately, buttressed by new neuroscience and cognitive science research, as well as a spate of high-profile media reports.
Parents in Upper Arlington, a suburb of Columbus, sued the Ohio Department of Education over a lack of access to screening and phonics in 2010. The parents won the lawsuit in 2011 and the state ordered corrective actions, including training for teachers and staff “to identify and evaluate students with learning disabilities and how to teach children with dyslexia how to read,” according to a report last year from American Public Media.
“The data are so clear, no other intervention shifts brain activity to make poor readers look like average readers more than structured literacy,” said Blanche Podhajski, the president of the Stern Center for Language and Learning in Williston.
But others — including many literacy scholars — argue that an over-emphasis on dyslexia and a phonics-first approach oversimplifies the problem.
“How these bills define ‘evidence-based structured literacy instruction’ quite honestly scares me,” Montpelier-Roxbury Superintendent Libby Bonesteel wrote in testimony submitted to lawmakers. “The only thing that research agrees on is that children are different and learn in different ways.”
Dyslexia advocates also say that mandatory screeners are necessary to get kids early intervention, before their struggles with literacy snowball.
Rep. Felisha Leffler, R-Enosburg, sponsored one of several bills this session requiring a mandatory dyslexia screening in kindergarten. Several people close to her, she said, including her partner, hadn’t received a proper diagnosis until late in their schooling.
“He was diagnosed in 10th grade. And he was at a first grade reading level,” she said.
Such screening might cost more money in the short term, Leffler acknowledged. But she argued the investment would well be worth it over time.
“It’s got to be less than the remedial costs of fixing someone’s education two years before they’re done with it,” she said.
Schools officials have countered that educators are already required to screen students who are struggling for disabilities. They argue widespread testing could also lead to the over-identification of children.
“Implementing a very narrow screening tool to target a specific way that students struggle is likely to result in a large number of false positives – students who don’t actually have an organic reading disability, but are struggling because they haven’t received good instruction,” Meagan Roy, the director of Student Support Services in the Champlain Valley School District, told lawmakers.
Experts also caution against universal screening. Podhajski, of the Stern Center, who is also an associate professor of neurological sciences at the University of Vermont, says the tests can also turn up false negatives.
“Children with dyslexia can be very smart at memorizing words. So they can pass these screening tests when in fact they don’t understand how to decode,” she said.
Webb said the committee would continue taking testimony this week.
