Emily Hanford: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

Senior correspondent for APM Reports Emily Hanford speaking at the Westminster Town Hall Forum. For more than a generation, schools across the U.S. embraced a specific methodology of teaching kids to read. The problem? Cognitive scientists had proven decades before it didn’t actually work. In her award-winning podcast "Sold a Story," Emily Hanford investigated the influential authors who promoted this idea and the company that sold it to schools across the country. She spoke at the Forum about what that has meant for millions of kids and what it says about education in the United States. Emily Hanford is a senior correspondent and producer for APM Reports, the documentary and investigative reporting group at American Public Media. Her work has appeared on NPR, in The New York Times and other publications. For the past several years, she has been reporting on reading instruction. Her 2018 podcast episode “Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read?” won the inaugural public service award from EWA. This program was recorded in front a live audience at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis on September 12, 2023. Learn more about the Westminster Town Hall Forum at our website: www.WestminsterForum.org