February 12, 2025 • 40 mins
For decades, we've had the research, the science, and the strategies to teach every child how to read—so why has it taken so long to put them into practice? 🤔
In this must-listen episode of Literacy Talks, we welcome Dr. David Hurford, Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives on Language and Literacy, to discuss the latest issue focusing on Structured Literacy and its critical role in reading instruction.
We dive into:
✅ The biggest myths holding back effective reading instruction
✅ Why Structured Literacy isn’t just for striving readers—it’s for EVERY reader
✅ The movement pushing states and schools to finally adopt science-based reading practices
If you’ve ever asked, Why aren’t we just teaching reading the way science tells us to?, this episode is for you. 🎧
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Narrator (00:03):
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. Donnell pons,
a recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Donell Pons (00:48):
We invited Dr David Hereford, because of his vast
knowledge of dyslexia andreading difficulties, and
because he co authored theintroduction to the
International DyslexiaAssociation's 75th anniversary
issue of perspectives, whichfocuses entirely on structured
literacy. He generously shareshis expertise, providing
insights that are bothfascinating and practical, while
(01:09):
our conversation flowedorganically. Dr Herford did most
of the talking, and the resultis an episode packed with
valuable information you won'tfind anywhere else. So again,
although unconventional in termsof a typical conversation, our
time with Dr Hereford coveredeverything from why the science
of reading has been sochallenging to implement, to his
(01:30):
thoughts on dyslexialegislation, and many things in
between. So enjoy the episode.
Stacy Hurst (01:36):
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm
Stacy Hurst and I'm joined byDonnell pons and Lindsay Kemeny
and a guest today, but I'm goingto let Donnell introduce our
guest. Those of you who havebeen listening know that we are
doing this season. We areaddressing topics in the
perspectives on language andliteracy. 75th anniversary issue
(01:57):
from Ida titled structuredliteracy grounded in the science
of reading. And Donelle, youhave arranged for us to have a
very awesome out of the gatefirst guest. So I will turn the
time over to you to introducewho we're going to be talking
with today.
Donell Pons (02:12):
Great. Thank you, Stacy, this is a pleasure, so I
just kind of we had a littlemoment to chat before we got
started here, and remindingDavid here that that we had met
years ago at a presentation thathe had done for the
International DyslexiaAssociation, and that I had
introduced my husband, who hasdyslexia, and I'd spoken about
him many times on the podcast,and you were so kind and
(02:33):
gracious, and had some reallygood conversations with him, and
that was a really pleasantmemory. And then all these years
later, to come back around andyou are now editor in chief of
the International DyslexiaAssociation publication
perspectives. And so this verybig issue that we're going to be
talking about, all regardingstructured literacy, has been
very much in the forefront foryou as well. So it's great here
(02:54):
for this conversation. Butfirst, David, I'd love for you
to give us a little background,because, as you have said you've
been in this thing, reading andwith dyslexia and reading
difficulties for a long time, somaybe kind of give us a little
bit of that background and thenbring us up to where you are
with Ida and this perspectivespublication, sure.
Unknown (03:14):
Well, you know, I don't know how far back you want me to
go, but if you'd asked me when Iwas four years old, what I
wanted to be when I grew up, Iwould have said I wanted to be a
scientist, and astronomy andastrophysics were my thing. And
I love that I had a littleastronomy book that I took
everywhere. And when I got inhigh school, I found out that
(03:35):
humans were way moreinteresting. So you know, when
you apply science and humanstogether. That's psychology. So
I majored in psychology and didmy doctoral work in
developmental psychology, and Ihad planned to work with older
adults, because I thought that'swhere all the really good
research was being done. And Iwas really interested in
(03:57):
developmental issues, and so Iwas working on a doctorate in
developmental psychology with acertificate in gerontology, and
we took a course on thepsychology of learning
disabilities. It was like, boom,that's where it's at. All the
things you know, neurology,information processing,
(04:18):
language, speech, memory,learning, all those things were
involved in this particularcourse. And in that course,
since it was a research basedtype of doctoral program, we had
to create a research proposalfor each course, and that one
became my dissertation. And wewere interested in looking at
(04:41):
why children who are strugglingreaders struggle to read, and we
looked at from a languageperspective, so the ability to
process speech sounds, and wefound that struggling readers
actually process speech soundsdifferently than children who
were actually good readers. Andso. Well, it's interesting now
this, this now emphasis indevelopmental learning
(05:05):
disabilities, and you know, thedifficulties with language I
should I meant to say thisdevelopmental language
disability, but it's kind ofcome kind of full circle for me.
And you know the perspectivesissue that was such a great one
for the 75th anniversary of theInternational Dyslexia
(05:29):
Association had so many greatauthors. And, you know, the
whole impetus for thatparticular issue is that we've
known the science for a longtime. You know, in reality, we
could argue we've known thescience to some extent for 100
years, and there's this been,you know, this rocky back and
(05:49):
forth with, hey, we want kids toget to meaning really quickly.
How do we get to kids to get tomeaning really quickly? Well, we
can just forget about the wordsand have them guess at them,
which, is we know as a threecueing system today, which we
know is a tragic mistake,absolutely tragic mistake, in
teaching acquisition of readingskills. And so we've, we've got
(06:14):
really 50 amazing years ofwonderful research that shows us
really what's going on withreading and how we should be
teaching it. And at this pointin time, you know, really,
teachers accept the fact thatthere is a science based
mechanism to examine how we doreading and what that should
(06:38):
look like in terms of teachingreading. And teachers are now
saying, Hey, we get it. We getit. Can you just tell us how to
freaking do it? That's what wewant to know. How do we do it in
our classrooms? Because weweren't taught when we're in
school how to do it. And so letus know how that goes. And so
that's kind of the impetus, youknow, because as my kind of
(07:02):
tenure as the executive editor.
You know, my goals have been,and I think the goal of idea,
obviously, in lots of people, soit's not just my goal, but I'm
really invested and interestedin helping teachers understand
how to do structured literacy,which is a term coined by the
International DyslexiaAssociation that just really
(07:25):
refers to, what are themechanisms that a person has to
do to be able to read? You know,what are those small, little
pieces they have to conquer andbe able to master before they
get to the point where they'rereading competently and
understanding what they'rereading. And so I just love that
we had, you know, thoseindividuals involved with that
(07:47):
particular issue. I think it's,it's pretty amazing. And you
know, they, we kind of partneredwith Boone philanthropy to
produce the actual paper versionof or their magazine version of
it, which was given out at theidea conference. And, you know,
(08:07):
yep, there it is. Looks, it'spretty sweet, yeah. So
Donell Pons (08:13):
David, you touched on a lot of really great points.
And your hope for the issue, asI'm understanding it, as you
were talking about for thisparticular issue. Your hope was
to provide a lot of thatinformation, your that feedback
you were hearing from teachersthat said, Hey, we get it. We're
on board. We understand it nowexactly, how do we do it?
Unknown (08:32):
Right? Yeah. And in reality, you know, they
understand that it's important,and they understand that is
something that they're findingout really is helpful to their
students, but I'm not reallysure they really understand all
of those pieces yet, and they'reinterested, as practitioners, to
(08:53):
actually use structured literacyto teach their children. And in
reality, we know that structuredliteracy is an absolute must for
struggling readers, for kids whohave dyslexia and reading
difficulties of other issues,but it's also the way that we
(09:14):
should be teaching readingperiod, whether you have the
genetic basis for you know,reading difficulty or dyslexia
or not is the way that we shouldbe teaching it. And, you know, I
think part of the argument thatpeople who are saying, I don't
want to change, I've beenteaching kids for 30 years how
to read, and I've been doing itsuccessfully. Well, the last
(09:38):
statement probably is notaccurate. You know, they've been
teaching some children to readsuccessfully using those
particular methods, and theseare children who would have
likely learned how to readperiod, no matter what method
you used. And we can make thatargument because, in reality,
(09:58):
when we look at. At the 37 39%of children who are not reading
at the basic level in fourthgrade on the National Assessment
of Educational Progress inreading, those kids aren't
certainly not learning how toread because the basic level
means you have the fundamentalskills, you just haven't gotten
them up to speed yet. So ifyou're reading below the basic
(10:22):
level, that means you don't evenhave that, which means you're a
struggling reader. You'rebelaboring the process of
reading. It's a struggle foryou, and as a function of
struggling to do those things,you certainly are not
comprehending what you'rereading. And so I think
teachers, most teachers, gotinto the field because they love
(10:46):
kids, and they love teaching,and they want their students to
learn how to read, and they'renot happy with what's going on
in their classrooms. And they'relistening to other people, you
know, lots of good teachers goto all kinds of in service
training and that. And they saythings like, well, if I can just
learn one thing that's going tohelp me become a better teacher,
(11:06):
it's worth it for me. And so Ithink at this point, you know,
it's becoming an overwhelmingamount of evidence at this
point, and it's been that wayfor decades. There's an
overwhelming amount of evidence,and I think some fairly
significant things havehappened. Number one, the
science has been there allalong, and the science has told
(11:29):
us. You know for sure, for kidswho are struggling readers, we
have to use this type ofapproach to teach them to read.
And in reality, for a lot ofother people who it's going to
be a struggle to learn how toread, that's how they should
learn how to read, too. Granted,there are some kids, maybe 10%
(11:49):
of them. No matter what you do,they're probably going to figure
it out. But that's such a smallgroup of people to say, Yeah,
I've been teaching kids for 30years, and it's like, actually,
you probably have it. So if youlook at the percentage of kids
which the estimate of childrenwho have dyslexia, somewhere
between seven and 15% sometimespeople argue 15 to 20% if you
(12:15):
look at the number of kids whohave dyslexia and subtract them
from the percentage of childrenwho are struggling readers
reading below the basic level,that tells us there's a bunch of
kids who could learn how to readif we use the correct
methodology to do so. So that'sthat's almost 25% of kids who
are struggling readers and don'tneed to be if we're using the
(12:38):
correct methodology. And I wouldargue that if we're using
structure literacy techniques inkindergarten to introduce the
whole concept of reading, thateven children who have the
genetics, for some of you knowthe difficulties learning how to
read, probably would learn howto read because I wrote a
(13:00):
curriculum 25 years ago that Ireferred to, really as the
mechanics of reading. But now,you know the term is structured
literacy was based essentiallyon the research and structured
literacy my interpretation ofit. And when kids use that
curriculum, they come outreading. You know, very few
struggling readers, because ifyou give them the concept
(13:22):
without confusing them with awhole bunch of other things at
the same time, you know, thenwe're in pretty good shape. So
number one, the science has beenthere steadily for decades, and
granted, we're still learningthings. There's no doubt about
that, but we absolutely knowenough at this point how to
teach most kids how to read. Ithink that's almost an
(13:45):
inarguable point. You know,there's other researchers like,
whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up alittle bit like, No, I'm all in
on that one. So we've had thescience, and then we had four or
five parents in New Jersey, 2011that said, You know what? We're
really sick and tired of peopletelling us we don't know
(14:06):
anything about dyslexia and wedon't have to know anything
about dyslexia, where, if youlook at idea, idea 2004
iteration of it, it clearly saysdyslexia. So you really can't
make that argument. We don'tknow anything about it. We don't
have to know anything about it.
And these parents came up with areally clever name for their
organization decoding, which issuper important to learning how
(14:29):
to read, because thealphabetically based systems are
codes that you have to decode,right and you have to encode to
spell. You decode to read andcode to spell and write. So
decoding is a really cool word,and then Decoding Dyslexia, it's
like, wow. I, I just love that.
(14:49):
I I love that name. I mean, whenI heard about them in 2013 I
thought, Man, that's a greatname. And you guys are doing
some really good work. And. AndI've been telling my colleagues
that, you know, if we don't, ifwe don't start teaching science
based methods of teachingreading, that eventually parents
(15:15):
will come to colleges ofeducation like the scene in
Frankenstein with it pitchforksand torches and they're going to
burn you down. And, you know,basically my colleagues are
saying, Go back to your office.
You don't know what you'retalking about. And here we are,
2011 I'm like, there it is. Imean, I saw it for what it was,
(15:35):
and that is a group of parentswho wanted to be advocates for
their children because theywanted their children to learn
how to read, because we know howvitally important reading is,
not just for academic success,not just for career success, but
to be successful in our culture,In life. You know it's you
(15:57):
can't. You can really not domuch without reading, just not
really possible. Can't apply fora bank loan or an apartment or
pass your driver's license test,you know, read your
prescriptions well enough totake them. You know, of course,
you guys know all this, and sotoo do your listeners. And so
(16:22):
you know parents are sayingwe're going to do something
about this. And so parents wentabout seeing how they could
influence individuals to startdealing with this issue of
dyslexia. And they're alsopretty smart people who are
learning awful lot about thescience of reading are finding
(16:42):
out, Hey, these are the waysthat we should be assessing kids
early on to identify them aspotentially as having a problem.
And here are methodologies thatshould be used to help them.
Now, you know, as people who arereading the scientific
literature, you know they'regoing to have different kind of
interpretations of it. So, youknow, there have been some
(17:03):
arguments. Well, we all have allthese different state laws now,
but they all have differentnotions of what this looks like.
It's like, yeah, because we'vebeen telling parents, here's
what you need to know, and nowparents are out there doing it.
So I certainly don't faultparents for having a law in
Arkansas that's different than alaw in Connecticut that's
different than a dyslexia law inCalifornia. You know, would it
(17:27):
be nice if we got everything allsynced together? Sure, but show
me 10 researchers who've beenstudying reading for, you know,
1020, years or more. Get them ina room, 10 of them, and say,
Hey, come up with the exact waythat we should be doing this.
They're going to argue about itand come up with different
things too.
(17:49):
So I think that was a reallysignificant part of our history.
And then, of course, we had thebrilliant writer Emily Hanford,
who started thinking, why do wehave so many kids who are
struggling readers? What isgoing on here? And she's very
good at asking questions, andshe's very good at asking
(18:13):
questions in a way that peoplewant to answer them and they
don't feel attacked. And I thinkthat a lot of teachers, for
example, are listening to thosepodcasts and are thinking to
themselves, huh, she's talkingabout the way I'm teaching. And
I do have a lot of kids who arestruggling readers, huh? What
(18:34):
can I do about that? And youknow, now we've got things going
on, really a whole shift in theway that things are progressing.
You know, last week, a classaction lawsuit was brought
against Heineman, who is apublisher of many of these three
queuing system types ofapproaches. You know, even
(18:56):
though they'll argue, well, weput phonics in there. But, you
know, the reading wars isn'treally about phonics versus
whole language. I mean, if youjust did phonics, that wouldn't
be enough. And whole languageis, you know, based on this
notion of psycholinguisticguessing that Goodman came up
with in the 60s. And so, youknow, neither one of those
(19:17):
approaches are going to be thethe answer. But structure
literacy is when you're lookingat how to process phonemes and
how to encode, how tosynthesize, you know, building a
language into it, in how to docomprehension, all those things
which are structured literacy,phonics is a part of it. It's
(19:42):
not a phonics program. It's aprogram that has phonics in it.
And I think one of the otherthings that I want your readers
to know is when you hear thescience of reading, I think
sometimes people think that thatis a curriculum, or that is a
program, and. It's not thescience of reading refers to
(20:04):
what we know about reading basedon science. And the reason why
that's important is because alot of these ideas, like
psycholinguistic guessing, isnot based in science. Because
when you look and watch how kidslearn how to read. They're, you
know, I mean, they will guess ifthey have to, but if you teach
(20:27):
them the mechanics of how todecode and synthesize and read
words, then you're going to findout that there's no need for
kids to guess at words, becausethey can decode them. And
granted, not all words aredecodable. So, you know, it's
even within that context.
There's a lot of other thingsgoing on that's complicated. So,
(20:48):
you know, so I think there's alot of things happening right
now that are very exciting forthose of us who've either
starting into the field rightnow, it's still, it's very
exciting, because the focus ison reading and science based
aspects of reading. And forthose of us who've been in the
field for decades, it's excitingto see that people are actually
(21:12):
starting to listen, which, youknow, for me, that's really
exciting. Because Sure, mycolleagues in in, you know, Ida
and other places who werelooking at reading from a
scientific standpoint, theyunderstood that too. But you
(21:33):
know, I'm in Kansas at aregional institution, and it's,
you know, a little different,but at the same time, you know,
if you take a look at what'sgoing on in Kansas, Senator
Baumgartner, who is a statelegislator here, was hearing a
(21:54):
lot from her constituents about,hey, we need To do something
about reading. And she spoke toother colleagues in the
legislature, and they came upwith the legislative Task Force
in dyslexia to look at what'sgoing on with dyslexia. And of
course, you know, I thinklooking at dyslexia is a great
thing, but let's look at thereading crisis in total. Not
(22:16):
just focus just on dyslexia,certainly an important piece of
it. But a lot of the things thatwe learned by studying people
who had dyslexia actually arecompletely relevant to people
who don't who struggle to learnhow to read. So it's just been
fascinating. And you know, ourgovernor signed Senate Bill 438,
(22:37):
which is the Kansas blueprintfor literacy into law last
April, and we are changing theway that reading is being taught
in Kansas from every which wayyou want to look at it, how pre
service teachers are taught theymust be taught the Science of
reading and particularlystructured literacy techniques,
(23:00):
the three tuning system isbanished from Kansas. School
systems must use structuredliteracy based curricula, and
anyone relate remotely relatedto elementary education of
reading, have to get training instructural literacy, and there's
(23:21):
some other components to it, butour Department of Education will
not allow an institution ofhigher education to be
accredited if they can't showthat they're doing structured
literacy training and science ofreading training. So we're
getting rid of all the stuffthat's not science based, that's
people made up that they thoughtwere great ideas, and in
(23:42):
reality, I don't really condemnthem for thinking of ways to
teach reading that they thoughtwould help kids, but it doesn't,
and at this point in time, weshould stop saying that it does,
because we look at the harm thatit causes kids, not just in
terms of not being able to Readand all the things that occur
with that. But every child whostarts kindergarten wants to
(24:05):
learn how to read, right? Theywant to learn how to read. And
you know that because whenthey're four years old, they're
at home and they're scribblingon paper, and you're like, What
are you doing? I'm writing.
Well, they're excited about it,and then they get into
kindergarten and find out, wow,I this. This doesn't work for
me. The way you guys areteaching this stuff. I don't get
(24:25):
it. And as a function of that,we see children our center. We
do about 300 evaluations peryear. We see children in our
center as young as kindergartenwho have anxiety about going to
school, and that anxiety infirst grade increases, and hand
in hand with anxiety, typically,is depression, and then when you
(24:49):
look at depression, there'sother issues along with that,
including suicide ideation, drugusage, dropping out of school
minute. This is. The mostsolvable problem that we're
facing today in education,solvable problem. We just have
to get people on board. And inKansas, you know, the literacy
(25:12):
advisory committee is made up of25 people from various aspects
of Kansas state legislators,people from the Department of
Ed, people from the Board ofRegents, people from higher
education, teachers,administrators. I mean, it's,
it's a pretty comprehensivegroup that you know is kind of
(25:34):
guiding this process, which nowwe have some pretty quick
deadlines, so we're movingquickly. So you know, when you
move quickly, you're bound tomake, you know, stumble or make
a mistake, but we'll giveourselves grace to go change
those and modify them. But yeah,I just, I know that's a long
answer to the first question,but in reality, it's, it's super
(25:55):
exciting for me to still be inthis space and to have
contributed to the science pieceof it and some other aspects of
what is happening and then seeit being played out.
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Donell Pons (26:45):
David, I love the way that you drew a through line
that we're not talking aboutjust kids that we know are going
to struggle. Maybe there's agenetic, you know, component
that's that's there, but this isteaching, this is information,
this is science that informsreading for all students, and
that's a really clear, goodmessage that people need to
hear. And
Unknown (27:06):
I think too when, when people hear the science of
reading, you know,unfortunately, there, there are
too many people today who revelin their ignorance of science,
like there are people who say,you know, happy to say, I'm a
flat earther, even though, sincethe seventh century, we have
known that the most commonobject in the universe is a
(27:30):
sphere. And in fact, the earthis a sphere. And you know, other
aspects of science. And so Ithink really, to say the science
of reading is important for usto claim that is a science,
because, you know, we don't saythings like, you know, the
science of biology or thescience of physics, because
everyone knows that biology andphysics are a science, but
(27:53):
reading hasn't been that way.
And so we need to reclaim thescience part of it, the reality
part of it, because in reality,what science does is to help us
understand what reality is, andwe use the scientific method to
extract as much of our personalbiases out of what we're doing.
Because as human beings, when wehave an idea, we really hope the
(28:16):
idea works, and then if it lookslike it's working, we're going
to stick with it. And that'sprecisely what happened with the
three cueing system, becausesome kids did learn how to read
using the three cueing system,because they were able to read
on their own. You know? I mean,when you look at the history of
writing systems, alphabeticallybased writing systems are
(28:40):
beautiful because they're a codefor us to represent the sounds,
and so even as adults, when weget to a word we've never read
before, there's a pretty goodchance we're going to be able to
read it based on our knowledgeof morphology and phonology and
how all those things work. Butif it was just like logographic,
(29:00):
we'd have absolutely no cluewhat it meant. So it's a
beautifully based system, butyou've got to teach it as a code
first. And even horse man, sometime ago, who was considered the
father of progressive education,did so many great things, but he
was absolutely, totally wrongabout how to teach reading. You
(29:22):
know that the drill and kill orwhatever. You know it's like, if
you teach them decoding, they'regonna hate to learn how to read.
It's like, no, they're gonnalove it, because the more things
that they can decode, the morethings they can read. That's
exciting. I've never met a kidthat was learning how to read
who wasn't excited aboutlearning the code, because
(29:44):
that's the basis for what we'redoing.
Donell Pons (29:48):
And David, you mentioned also some of the folks
who had contributed to thisissue, and there's some
luminaries right in reading, andthere's something about the
International DyslexiaAssociation that they're able to
get people. People who have deepbackgrounds to step up and want
to be a part of it and tell us alittle bit about that
camaraderie, that sharing ofinformation, because I think
it's important.
Unknown (30:10):
Well, you know, if you look at the very beginning of
the Orton society, these wereresearchers and people who
wanted to help children learnhow to read. And, you know, the
research, it's, it's kind ofinteresting, because there's
different types of science, youknow, there's basic science,
just to see how things work.
And, you know, people make funof scientists for, you know, why
(30:33):
are you looking at this? Whyaren't you looking at world
hunger? It's like, because thisis of interest to me, and I want
to know how this works. And soyou got basic science, which is
just helping us understand howthe universe works. And every
little tidbit of how we canfigure out how the universe
works is interesting. It just iswhether there's application in
(30:53):
real life or not, which a lot oftimes there are. And then you
have the Applied Science, whichis how you apply some of that
basic research to help peopleand in in this field, like when
I first got into this field, youknow, I didn't get into it to
help solve the reading problem,or I didn't really know much
(31:14):
about dyslexia at all. Remember,I wanted to be a developmental
psychologist. I knew whatdyslexia was, kind of just some
familiarity with it, but thatone, course, you know, that kind
of set me on fire, because itwas so interesting. But you
know, if you look at some of thepeople in the field, why did
they get in the field? You know,they were teachers who are like,
(31:35):
Why is this kid not learning howto read? Like Louisa Moats, his
background. Why was this kid notlearning how to read? Maybe I
need to get more educated tofigure this out. You know, look
at, you know, read Lion's work.
You know, the quintessentialexpert on the science of reading
pushed forward the No Child LeftBehind to help kids become
(31:57):
competent readers. Of course, itwas not as successful as we'd
like, certainly not Dr Lyon hisexpectations. Because, in
reality, with reading first,and, you know, other aspects
that were connected to No Childapplying, we really had, we had
it figured out. We did, but theimplementation of it, right?
(32:20):
That's, that's the hard part.
And, you know, how do you makethings work? You know, do you
create a law that beats upschools if they're not doing a
good job? Or do you provide someother type of incentive, right?
And Dr Lyon has been veryinterested, and has visited
Kansas a few times to kind ofhelp us on our journey with the
Kansas blueprint, because he'sinfested, you know, and he's
(32:43):
retired. But you're never reallyretired when you're working in
this area. You're just not,because there's interesting and
exciting things you know, thatare happening. And so I think if
you look at the particularfield, yes, there are scientists
in there who are trying tofigure out exactly how the brain
is processing reading types ofinformation and how. What does
(33:07):
it look like when you have achild who's a struggling reader,
if you do an appropriateintervention, how does the brain
process that information now?
And it turns out differently,which really is no surprise,
because you know, behavior isrooted in the brain. So if you
have different behavior,probably got some different
(33:28):
brain mechanisms that are doingthings differently than they did
before. So you got this justenormous group of individuals
who their research actually hastold us how we should be
teaching reading, and how thatshould look. And in this
particular issue was, yeah,let's, let's have an issue where
(33:50):
all these various individualswho really do care about not
only science, but alsoindividuals learning how to
read. Now let's have them talkabout, you know, learning how to
read and so that that's kind ofthe impetus for it. And you
know, in this field, people arealways willing to help, even
(34:11):
people who are retired, likeread lyre like, Hey, can you
come to Kansas? And he's like,Well, you know, I really don't
do any traveling for businessanymore, and I'm like, Well, why
don't you take a look at whatwe're doing here with this
blueprint? And he did. He'slike, wait a minute, let's go
see this. And he's been as heand Diane lion have been a huge
(34:31):
help and many others across thecountry, because this isn't for
us. It's not just a Kansasthing. We we can just do things
in Kansas, because this is wherewe're at, and we have a law in
Kansas, but, you know, we'rehoping that our if we have
success, which I can't imagine,that we won't I mean, granted,
there's always something thatcan happen, right? But if we're
(34:53):
successful, it's going to besomething that other states want
to emulate, you know, like theMiss. Mississippi miracle,
right? You know, people seethat. They're like, Well, how
did you do that? We want to knowhow to do that. And in reality,
you know, it's not really amiracle, is it? It's just the
science. You know, they'veapplied science, which, I guess
(35:15):
in itself, in itself, is kind ofa miracle, right? But they
applied the science. And, youknow, Mississippi still has a
lot of struggling readers.
They've got growth to do. Imean, we're not going to, no
one's going to say we've gotthis licked at this point in
time. We're in the process ofgetting things going in the
(35:36):
right direction. So
Lindsay Kemeny (35:39):
there's something that I love that you
said in in the article, it readsas science advanced idea evolved
as we evolved, our visionsharpened. And I like that
because, as you're saying, wehave all this science, but it is
evolving. And I love this idea,you know, we need to be evolving
too. And I love this idea of ourvision sharpening as we're
(36:03):
working with kids. Yes,
Unknown (36:05):
yeah. And I think that, you know, like you said, you
know, we're it's still evolving.
You know, for example, when youlook at the simple view of
reading, and the simple view ofreading came out, actually, when
I was still in my doctoraltraining, and I remember looking
at the title of it, going asimple view of reading. What are
you talking about? Nothingsimple about reading. And then
you read the article, and you'relike, Oh, I get what you're
(36:29):
talking about, right? And, youknow, I you know. Again, for
your readers who may not knowwhat the simple view of reading
is, but it's this notion ofdecoding ability, multiplied by
your language ability, helps youunderstand your reading ability,
right? So if you cannot decode,then you can't comprehend what
(36:49):
you're reading, because you'renot reading, you're not
decoding. And you know the flipis also true, like if you're a
great decoder, but you reallydon't know the language, then
you don't understand what you'rereading. And to give an example
of the latter, you know, forpeople who have taken high
school Spanish, you know,Spanish is one of those
(37:11):
languages. It's a very efficientlanguage in itself, but the
writing system is also, youknow, pretty easy to pick up on
in terms of decoding. So if youlearned how to read Spanish in
high school, you can stilldecode it because it's, you
know, what we call transparentwriting system. So the vial, the
(37:33):
vowel sounds are always going tobe the same vowel sounds. It's
not like, you know, in English,where there's many different
ways of writing a particularvowel sound. So, you know, right
now, those of individuals whoare listening who took Spanish,
like, yeah, I can, I can decodeand read pretty well. But do you
know what you're reading? Well,no, I don't know the words.
(37:55):
That's what we're talking aboutwith the language. Piece of the
simple view of reading. It takesboth the language piece and
then, you know, the decodingpiece to be able to comprehend
what you're reading. And so,yeah, all those little pieces
we're learning more and more.
You know, there are children whohave, you know, developmental
(38:17):
language disorder and haveproblems with language. We have
a lot of English languagelearners who are in the United
States, which, you know, we needfor them to learn how to read.
And, you know, we have differentdialects. You know, it's, it's,
really, is a fascinating area,truly,
Donell Pons (38:35):
yeah. And it's interesting, David, as we've
all, you know, talked, and ourbackgrounds are so very
different, but involved inreading in some way or another.
You're so right. It reaches intoso many aspects of our lives, of
people's lives, that really, youcould never get bored with this
field or with the ability tolearn more about how to improve
doing it too. So that's anotherthing. It's you're a lifelong
(38:56):
learner. If you're in the fieldand you're helping anybody, you
learn that very quickly, is thatthere is always something new to
learn. The science is evolving.
So that's you have to be peoplewho are okay with that and up to
date and ready to go there whenthe next piece comes out and
update their information. Sothat piece about evolving is
really important too. David,this has been a fantastic
conversation. We could probablylisten to you for days, because
you're just so full of wisdomabout this area. But really
(39:19):
appreciate you taking the timeto not only discuss the issue,
but also give us some broaderunderstanding right of not only
your entry point into thisfield, but then what came before
you, what's around you. So wereally appreciated you taking
the time to do that with us.
Thank you. Well,
Unknown (39:35):
thank you for giving me the opportunity. As as my
friends and family know, youdon't give them too much time
because he won't stop talking.
That's great.
Stacy Hurst (39:46):
Do you know? I think that's probably on each of
our report cards going back insome form or another. So we can
relate and appreciate that.
Thank you for podcasters.
Doesn't it? Yes, it does. Andlearning to read, right? That
language components important.
As a first grade teacher, I usedto say, give me the chatty kids.
I'll take them. Yeah, yes. Thankyou so much. And we do want to
(40:10):
end this episode by thanking ourlisteners for joining us for
this awesome episode, and wehope you'll join us next time on
another episode of literacytalks.
Narrator (40:24):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
Reading horizons.com/literacy.
Talks to access episodes andresources to support your
journey in the science ofreading you.
Welcome to literacy talks, the podcast for literacy
leaders and championseverywhere, brought to you by
Reading Horizons. Literacy talksis the place to discover new
ideas, trends, insights andpractical strategies for helping
all learners reach readingproficiency. Our hosts are
Stacey Hurst, a professor atSouthern Utah University and
(00:26):
Chief Academic Advisor forReading Horizons. Donnell pons,
a recognized expert and advocatein literacy, dyslexia and
special education, and LindsayKemeny, an elementary classroom
teacher, author and speaker. Nowlet's talk literacy.
Donell Pons (00:48):
We invited Dr David Hereford, because of his vast
knowledge of dyslexia andreading difficulties, and
because he co authored theintroduction to the
International DyslexiaAssociation's 75th anniversary
issue of perspectives, whichfocuses entirely on structured
literacy. He generously shareshis expertise, providing
insights that are bothfascinating and practical, while
(01:09):
our conversation flowedorganically. Dr Herford did most
of the talking, and the resultis an episode packed with
valuable information you won'tfind anywhere else. So again,
although unconventional in termsof a typical conversation, our
time with Dr Hereford coveredeverything from why the science
of reading has been sochallenging to implement, to his
(01:30):
thoughts on dyslexialegislation, and many things in
between. So enjoy the episode.
Stacy Hurst (01:36):
Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm
Stacy Hurst and I'm joined byDonnell pons and Lindsay Kemeny
and a guest today, but I'm goingto let Donnell introduce our
guest. Those of you who havebeen listening know that we are
doing this season. We areaddressing topics in the
perspectives on language andliteracy. 75th anniversary issue
(01:57):
from Ida titled structuredliteracy grounded in the science
of reading. And Donelle, youhave arranged for us to have a
very awesome out of the gatefirst guest. So I will turn the
time over to you to introducewho we're going to be talking
with today.
Donell Pons (02:12):
Great. Thank you, Stacy, this is a pleasure, so I
just kind of we had a littlemoment to chat before we got
started here, and remindingDavid here that that we had met
years ago at a presentation thathe had done for the
International DyslexiaAssociation, and that I had
introduced my husband, who hasdyslexia, and I'd spoken about
him many times on the podcast,and you were so kind and
(02:33):
gracious, and had some reallygood conversations with him, and
that was a really pleasantmemory. And then all these years
later, to come back around andyou are now editor in chief of
the International DyslexiaAssociation publication
perspectives. And so this verybig issue that we're going to be
talking about, all regardingstructured literacy, has been
very much in the forefront foryou as well. So it's great here
(02:54):
for this conversation. Butfirst, David, I'd love for you
to give us a little background,because, as you have said you've
been in this thing, reading andwith dyslexia and reading
difficulties for a long time, somaybe kind of give us a little
bit of that background and thenbring us up to where you are
with Ida and this perspectivespublication, sure.
Unknown (03:14):
Well, you know, I don't know how far back you want me to
go, but if you'd asked me when Iwas four years old, what I
wanted to be when I grew up, Iwould have said I wanted to be a
scientist, and astronomy andastrophysics were my thing. And
I love that I had a littleastronomy book that I took
everywhere. And when I got inhigh school, I found out that
(03:35):
humans were way moreinteresting. So you know, when
you apply science and humanstogether. That's psychology. So
I majored in psychology and didmy doctoral work in
developmental psychology, and Ihad planned to work with older
adults, because I thought that'swhere all the really good
research was being done. And Iwas really interested in
(03:57):
developmental issues, and so Iwas working on a doctorate in
developmental psychology with acertificate in gerontology, and
we took a course on thepsychology of learning
disabilities. It was like, boom,that's where it's at. All the
things you know, neurology,information processing,
(04:18):
language, speech, memory,learning, all those things were
involved in this particularcourse. And in that course,
since it was a research basedtype of doctoral program, we had
to create a research proposalfor each course, and that one
became my dissertation. And wewere interested in looking at
(04:41):
why children who are strugglingreaders struggle to read, and we
looked at from a languageperspective, so the ability to
process speech sounds, and wefound that struggling readers
actually process speech soundsdifferently than children who
were actually good readers. Andso. Well, it's interesting now
this, this now emphasis indevelopmental learning
(05:05):
disabilities, and you know, thedifficulties with language I
should I meant to say thisdevelopmental language
disability, but it's kind ofcome kind of full circle for me.
And you know the perspectivesissue that was such a great one
for the 75th anniversary of theInternational Dyslexia
(05:29):
Association had so many greatauthors. And, you know, the
whole impetus for thatparticular issue is that we've
known the science for a longtime. You know, in reality, we
could argue we've known thescience to some extent for 100
years, and there's this been,you know, this rocky back and
(05:49):
forth with, hey, we want kids toget to meaning really quickly.
How do we get to kids to get tomeaning really quickly? Well, we
can just forget about the wordsand have them guess at them,
which, is we know as a threecueing system today, which we
know is a tragic mistake,absolutely tragic mistake, in
teaching acquisition of readingskills. And so we've, we've got
(06:14):
really 50 amazing years ofwonderful research that shows us
really what's going on withreading and how we should be
teaching it. And at this pointin time, you know, really,
teachers accept the fact thatthere is a science based
mechanism to examine how we doreading and what that should
(06:38):
look like in terms of teachingreading. And teachers are now
saying, Hey, we get it. We getit. Can you just tell us how to
freaking do it? That's what wewant to know. How do we do it in
our classrooms? Because weweren't taught when we're in
school how to do it. And so letus know how that goes. And so
that's kind of the impetus, youknow, because as my kind of
(07:02):
tenure as the executive editor.
You know, my goals have been,and I think the goal of idea,
obviously, in lots of people, soit's not just my goal, but I'm
really invested and interestedin helping teachers understand
how to do structured literacy,which is a term coined by the
International DyslexiaAssociation that just really
(07:25):
refers to, what are themechanisms that a person has to
do to be able to read? You know,what are those small, little
pieces they have to conquer andbe able to master before they
get to the point where they'rereading competently and
understanding what they'rereading. And so I just love that
we had, you know, thoseindividuals involved with that
(07:47):
particular issue. I think it's,it's pretty amazing. And you
know, they, we kind of partneredwith Boone philanthropy to
produce the actual paper versionof or their magazine version of
it, which was given out at theidea conference. And, you know,
(08:07):
yep, there it is. Looks, it'spretty sweet, yeah. So
Donell Pons (08:13):
David, you touched on a lot of really great points.
And your hope for the issue, asI'm understanding it, as you
were talking about for thisparticular issue. Your hope was
to provide a lot of thatinformation, your that feedback
you were hearing from teachersthat said, Hey, we get it. We're
on board. We understand it nowexactly, how do we do it?
Unknown (08:32):
Right? Yeah. And in reality, you know, they
understand that it's important,and they understand that is
something that they're findingout really is helpful to their
students, but I'm not reallysure they really understand all
of those pieces yet, and they'reinterested, as practitioners, to
(08:53):
actually use structured literacyto teach their children. And in
reality, we know that structuredliteracy is an absolute must for
struggling readers, for kids whohave dyslexia and reading
difficulties of other issues,but it's also the way that we
(09:14):
should be teaching readingperiod, whether you have the
genetic basis for you know,reading difficulty or dyslexia
or not is the way that we shouldbe teaching it. And, you know, I
think part of the argument thatpeople who are saying, I don't
want to change, I've beenteaching kids for 30 years how
to read, and I've been doing itsuccessfully. Well, the last
(09:38):
statement probably is notaccurate. You know, they've been
teaching some children to readsuccessfully using those
particular methods, and theseare children who would have
likely learned how to readperiod, no matter what method
you used. And we can make thatargument because, in reality,
(09:58):
when we look at. At the 37 39%of children who are not reading
at the basic level in fourthgrade on the National Assessment
of Educational Progress inreading, those kids aren't
certainly not learning how toread because the basic level
means you have the fundamentalskills, you just haven't gotten
them up to speed yet. So ifyou're reading below the basic
(10:22):
level, that means you don't evenhave that, which means you're a
struggling reader. You'rebelaboring the process of
reading. It's a struggle foryou, and as a function of
struggling to do those things,you certainly are not
comprehending what you'rereading. And so I think
teachers, most teachers, gotinto the field because they love
(10:46):
kids, and they love teaching,and they want their students to
learn how to read, and they'renot happy with what's going on
in their classrooms. And they'relistening to other people, you
know, lots of good teachers goto all kinds of in service
training and that. And they saythings like, well, if I can just
learn one thing that's going tohelp me become a better teacher,
(11:06):
it's worth it for me. And so Ithink at this point, you know,
it's becoming an overwhelmingamount of evidence at this
point, and it's been that wayfor decades. There's an
overwhelming amount of evidence,and I think some fairly
significant things havehappened. Number one, the
science has been there allalong, and the science has told
(11:29):
us. You know for sure, for kidswho are struggling readers, we
have to use this type ofapproach to teach them to read.
And in reality, for a lot ofother people who it's going to
be a struggle to learn how toread, that's how they should
learn how to read, too. Granted,there are some kids, maybe 10%
(11:49):
of them. No matter what you do,they're probably going to figure
it out. But that's such a smallgroup of people to say, Yeah,
I've been teaching kids for 30years, and it's like, actually,
you probably have it. So if youlook at the percentage of kids
which the estimate of childrenwho have dyslexia, somewhere
between seven and 15% sometimespeople argue 15 to 20% if you
(12:15):
look at the number of kids whohave dyslexia and subtract them
from the percentage of childrenwho are struggling readers
reading below the basic level,that tells us there's a bunch of
kids who could learn how to readif we use the correct
methodology to do so. So that'sthat's almost 25% of kids who
are struggling readers and don'tneed to be if we're using the
(12:38):
correct methodology. And I wouldargue that if we're using
structure literacy techniques inkindergarten to introduce the
whole concept of reading, thateven children who have the
genetics, for some of you knowthe difficulties learning how to
read, probably would learn howto read because I wrote a
(13:00):
curriculum 25 years ago that Ireferred to, really as the
mechanics of reading. But now,you know the term is structured
literacy was based essentiallyon the research and structured
literacy my interpretation ofit. And when kids use that
curriculum, they come outreading. You know, very few
struggling readers, because ifyou give them the concept
(13:22):
without confusing them with awhole bunch of other things at
the same time, you know, thenwe're in pretty good shape. So
number one, the science has beenthere steadily for decades, and
granted, we're still learningthings. There's no doubt about
that, but we absolutely knowenough at this point how to
teach most kids how to read. Ithink that's almost an
(13:45):
inarguable point. You know,there's other researchers like,
whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up alittle bit like, No, I'm all in
on that one. So we've had thescience, and then we had four or
five parents in New Jersey, 2011that said, You know what? We're
really sick and tired of peopletelling us we don't know
(14:06):
anything about dyslexia and wedon't have to know anything
about dyslexia, where, if youlook at idea, idea 2004
iteration of it, it clearly saysdyslexia. So you really can't
make that argument. We don'tknow anything about it. We don't
have to know anything about it.
And these parents came up with areally clever name for their
organization decoding, which issuper important to learning how
(14:29):
to read, because thealphabetically based systems are
codes that you have to decode,right and you have to encode to
spell. You decode to read andcode to spell and write. So
decoding is a really cool word,and then Decoding Dyslexia, it's
like, wow. I, I just love that.
(14:49):
I I love that name. I mean, whenI heard about them in 2013 I
thought, Man, that's a greatname. And you guys are doing
some really good work. And. AndI've been telling my colleagues
that, you know, if we don't, ifwe don't start teaching science
based methods of teachingreading, that eventually parents
(15:15):
will come to colleges ofeducation like the scene in
Frankenstein with it pitchforksand torches and they're going to
burn you down. And, you know,basically my colleagues are
saying, Go back to your office.
You don't know what you'retalking about. And here we are,
2011 I'm like, there it is. Imean, I saw it for what it was,
(15:35):
and that is a group of parentswho wanted to be advocates for
their children because theywanted their children to learn
how to read, because we know howvitally important reading is,
not just for academic success,not just for career success, but
to be successful in our culture,In life. You know it's you
(15:57):
can't. You can really not domuch without reading, just not
really possible. Can't apply fora bank loan or an apartment or
pass your driver's license test,you know, read your
prescriptions well enough totake them. You know, of course,
you guys know all this, and sotoo do your listeners. And so
(16:22):
you know parents are sayingwe're going to do something
about this. And so parents wentabout seeing how they could
influence individuals to startdealing with this issue of
dyslexia. And they're alsopretty smart people who are
learning awful lot about thescience of reading are finding
(16:42):
out, Hey, these are the waysthat we should be assessing kids
early on to identify them aspotentially as having a problem.
And here are methodologies thatshould be used to help them.
Now, you know, as people who arereading the scientific
literature, you know they'regoing to have different kind of
interpretations of it. So, youknow, there have been some
(17:03):
arguments. Well, we all have allthese different state laws now,
but they all have differentnotions of what this looks like.
It's like, yeah, because we'vebeen telling parents, here's
what you need to know, and nowparents are out there doing it.
So I certainly don't faultparents for having a law in
Arkansas that's different than alaw in Connecticut that's
different than a dyslexia law inCalifornia. You know, would it
(17:27):
be nice if we got everything allsynced together? Sure, but show
me 10 researchers who've beenstudying reading for, you know,
1020, years or more. Get them ina room, 10 of them, and say,
Hey, come up with the exact waythat we should be doing this.
They're going to argue about itand come up with different
things too.
(17:49):
So I think that was a reallysignificant part of our history.
And then, of course, we had thebrilliant writer Emily Hanford,
who started thinking, why do wehave so many kids who are
struggling readers? What isgoing on here? And she's very
good at asking questions, andshe's very good at asking
(18:13):
questions in a way that peoplewant to answer them and they
don't feel attacked. And I thinkthat a lot of teachers, for
example, are listening to thosepodcasts and are thinking to
themselves, huh, she's talkingabout the way I'm teaching. And
I do have a lot of kids who arestruggling readers, huh? What
(18:34):
can I do about that? And youknow, now we've got things going
on, really a whole shift in theway that things are progressing.
You know, last week, a classaction lawsuit was brought
against Heineman, who is apublisher of many of these three
queuing system types ofapproaches. You know, even
(18:56):
though they'll argue, well, weput phonics in there. But, you
know, the reading wars isn'treally about phonics versus
whole language. I mean, if youjust did phonics, that wouldn't
be enough. And whole languageis, you know, based on this
notion of psycholinguisticguessing that Goodman came up
with in the 60s. And so, youknow, neither one of those
(19:17):
approaches are going to be thethe answer. But structure
literacy is when you're lookingat how to process phonemes and
how to encode, how tosynthesize, you know, building a
language into it, in how to docomprehension, all those things
which are structured literacy,phonics is a part of it. It's
(19:42):
not a phonics program. It's aprogram that has phonics in it.
And I think one of the otherthings that I want your readers
to know is when you hear thescience of reading, I think
sometimes people think that thatis a curriculum, or that is a
program, and. It's not thescience of reading refers to
(20:04):
what we know about reading basedon science. And the reason why
that's important is because alot of these ideas, like
psycholinguistic guessing, isnot based in science. Because
when you look and watch how kidslearn how to read. They're, you
know, I mean, they will guess ifthey have to, but if you teach
(20:27):
them the mechanics of how todecode and synthesize and read
words, then you're going to findout that there's no need for
kids to guess at words, becausethey can decode them. And
granted, not all words aredecodable. So, you know, it's
even within that context.
There's a lot of other thingsgoing on that's complicated. So,
(20:48):
you know, so I think there's alot of things happening right
now that are very exciting forthose of us who've either
starting into the field rightnow, it's still, it's very
exciting, because the focus ison reading and science based
aspects of reading. And forthose of us who've been in the
field for decades, it's excitingto see that people are actually
(21:12):
starting to listen, which, youknow, for me, that's really
exciting. Because Sure, mycolleagues in in, you know, Ida
and other places who werelooking at reading from a
scientific standpoint, theyunderstood that too. But you
(21:33):
know, I'm in Kansas at aregional institution, and it's,
you know, a little different,but at the same time, you know,
if you take a look at what'sgoing on in Kansas, Senator
Baumgartner, who is a statelegislator here, was hearing a
(21:54):
lot from her constituents about,hey, we need To do something
about reading. And she spoke toother colleagues in the
legislature, and they came upwith the legislative Task Force
in dyslexia to look at what'sgoing on with dyslexia. And of
course, you know, I thinklooking at dyslexia is a great
thing, but let's look at thereading crisis in total. Not
(22:16):
just focus just on dyslexia,certainly an important piece of
it. But a lot of the things thatwe learned by studying people
who had dyslexia actually arecompletely relevant to people
who don't who struggle to learnhow to read. So it's just been
fascinating. And you know, ourgovernor signed Senate Bill 438,
(22:37):
which is the Kansas blueprintfor literacy into law last
April, and we are changing theway that reading is being taught
in Kansas from every which wayyou want to look at it, how pre
service teachers are taught theymust be taught the Science of
reading and particularlystructured literacy techniques,
(23:00):
the three tuning system isbanished from Kansas. School
systems must use structuredliteracy based curricula, and
anyone relate remotely relatedto elementary education of
reading, have to get training instructural literacy, and there's
(23:21):
some other components to it, butour Department of Education will
not allow an institution ofhigher education to be
accredited if they can't showthat they're doing structured
literacy training and science ofreading training. So we're
getting rid of all the stuffthat's not science based, that's
people made up that they thoughtwere great ideas, and in
(23:42):
reality, I don't really condemnthem for thinking of ways to
teach reading that they thoughtwould help kids, but it doesn't,
and at this point in time, weshould stop saying that it does,
because we look at the harm thatit causes kids, not just in
terms of not being able to Readand all the things that occur
with that. But every child whostarts kindergarten wants to
(24:05):
learn how to read, right? Theywant to learn how to read. And
you know that because whenthey're four years old, they're
at home and they're scribblingon paper, and you're like, What
are you doing? I'm writing.
Well, they're excited about it,and then they get into
kindergarten and find out, wow,I this. This doesn't work for
me. The way you guys areteaching this stuff. I don't get
(24:25):
it. And as a function of that,we see children our center. We
do about 300 evaluations peryear. We see children in our
center as young as kindergartenwho have anxiety about going to
school, and that anxiety infirst grade increases, and hand
in hand with anxiety, typically,is depression, and then when you
(24:49):
look at depression, there'sother issues along with that,
including suicide ideation, drugusage, dropping out of school
minute. This is. The mostsolvable problem that we're
facing today in education,solvable problem. We just have
to get people on board. And inKansas, you know, the literacy
(25:12):
advisory committee is made up of25 people from various aspects
of Kansas state legislators,people from the Department of
Ed, people from the Board ofRegents, people from higher
education, teachers,administrators. I mean, it's,
it's a pretty comprehensivegroup that you know is kind of
(25:34):
guiding this process, which nowwe have some pretty quick
deadlines, so we're movingquickly. So you know, when you
move quickly, you're bound tomake, you know, stumble or make
a mistake, but we'll giveourselves grace to go change
those and modify them. But yeah,I just, I know that's a long
answer to the first question,but in reality, it's, it's super
(25:55):
exciting for me to still be inthis space and to have
contributed to the science pieceof it and some other aspects of
what is happening and then seeit being played out.
Narrator (26:08):
Educators and administrators know how
important it is to close thegaps in foundational literacy
skills for older learners.
Reading Horizons Elevate isdesigned to help students in
grades four through 12 andbeyond, Master foundational
skills they may have missed bycombining direct instruction
with engaging age appropriatesoftware. Reading Horizons
Elevate makes readingproficiency attainable for older
(26:30):
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key to unlocking success acrossall academic subjects. Visit
Reading horizons.com/elevate, tolearn more.
Donell Pons (26:45):
David, I love the way that you drew a through line
that we're not talking aboutjust kids that we know are going
to struggle. Maybe there's agenetic, you know, component
that's that's there, but this isteaching, this is information,
this is science that informsreading for all students, and
that's a really clear, goodmessage that people need to
hear. And
Unknown (27:06):
I think too when, when people hear the science of
reading, you know,unfortunately, there, there are
too many people today who revelin their ignorance of science,
like there are people who say,you know, happy to say, I'm a
flat earther, even though, sincethe seventh century, we have
known that the most commonobject in the universe is a
(27:30):
sphere. And in fact, the earthis a sphere. And you know, other
aspects of science. And so Ithink really, to say the science
of reading is important for usto claim that is a science,
because, you know, we don't saythings like, you know, the
science of biology or thescience of physics, because
everyone knows that biology andphysics are a science, but
(27:53):
reading hasn't been that way.
And so we need to reclaim thescience part of it, the reality
part of it, because in reality,what science does is to help us
understand what reality is, andwe use the scientific method to
extract as much of our personalbiases out of what we're doing.
Because as human beings, when wehave an idea, we really hope the
(28:16):
idea works, and then if it lookslike it's working, we're going
to stick with it. And that'sprecisely what happened with the
three cueing system, becausesome kids did learn how to read
using the three cueing system,because they were able to read
on their own. You know? I mean,when you look at the history of
writing systems, alphabeticallybased writing systems are
(28:40):
beautiful because they're a codefor us to represent the sounds,
and so even as adults, when weget to a word we've never read
before, there's a pretty goodchance we're going to be able to
read it based on our knowledgeof morphology and phonology and
how all those things work. Butif it was just like logographic,
(29:00):
we'd have absolutely no cluewhat it meant. So it's a
beautifully based system, butyou've got to teach it as a code
first. And even horse man, sometime ago, who was considered the
father of progressive education,did so many great things, but he
was absolutely, totally wrongabout how to teach reading. You
(29:22):
know that the drill and kill orwhatever. You know it's like, if
you teach them decoding, they'regonna hate to learn how to read.
It's like, no, they're gonnalove it, because the more things
that they can decode, the morethings they can read. That's
exciting. I've never met a kidthat was learning how to read
who wasn't excited aboutlearning the code, because
(29:44):
that's the basis for what we'redoing.
Donell Pons (29:48):
And David, you mentioned also some of the folks
who had contributed to thisissue, and there's some
luminaries right in reading, andthere's something about the
International DyslexiaAssociation that they're able to
get people. People who have deepbackgrounds to step up and want
to be a part of it and tell us alittle bit about that
camaraderie, that sharing ofinformation, because I think
it's important.
Unknown (30:10):
Well, you know, if you look at the very beginning of
the Orton society, these wereresearchers and people who
wanted to help children learnhow to read. And, you know, the
research, it's, it's kind ofinteresting, because there's
different types of science, youknow, there's basic science,
just to see how things work.
And, you know, people make funof scientists for, you know, why
(30:33):
are you looking at this? Whyaren't you looking at world
hunger? It's like, because thisis of interest to me, and I want
to know how this works. And soyou got basic science, which is
just helping us understand howthe universe works. And every
little tidbit of how we canfigure out how the universe
works is interesting. It just iswhether there's application in
(30:53):
real life or not, which a lot oftimes there are. And then you
have the Applied Science, whichis how you apply some of that
basic research to help peopleand in in this field, like when
I first got into this field, youknow, I didn't get into it to
help solve the reading problem,or I didn't really know much
(31:14):
about dyslexia at all. Remember,I wanted to be a developmental
psychologist. I knew whatdyslexia was, kind of just some
familiarity with it, but thatone, course, you know, that kind
of set me on fire, because itwas so interesting. But you
know, if you look at some of thepeople in the field, why did
they get in the field? You know,they were teachers who are like,
(31:35):
Why is this kid not learning howto read? Like Louisa Moats, his
background. Why was this kid notlearning how to read? Maybe I
need to get more educated tofigure this out. You know, look
at, you know, read Lion's work.
You know, the quintessentialexpert on the science of reading
pushed forward the No Child LeftBehind to help kids become
(31:57):
competent readers. Of course, itwas not as successful as we'd
like, certainly not Dr Lyon hisexpectations. Because, in
reality, with reading first,and, you know, other aspects
that were connected to No Childapplying, we really had, we had
it figured out. We did, but theimplementation of it, right?
(32:20):
That's, that's the hard part.
And, you know, how do you makethings work? You know, do you
create a law that beats upschools if they're not doing a
good job? Or do you provide someother type of incentive, right?
And Dr Lyon has been veryinterested, and has visited
Kansas a few times to kind ofhelp us on our journey with the
Kansas blueprint, because he'sinfested, you know, and he's
(32:43):
retired. But you're never reallyretired when you're working in
this area. You're just not,because there's interesting and
exciting things you know, thatare happening. And so I think if
you look at the particularfield, yes, there are scientists
in there who are trying tofigure out exactly how the brain
is processing reading types ofinformation and how. What does
(33:07):
it look like when you have achild who's a struggling reader,
if you do an appropriateintervention, how does the brain
process that information now?
And it turns out differently,which really is no surprise,
because you know, behavior isrooted in the brain. So if you
have different behavior,probably got some different
(33:28):
brain mechanisms that are doingthings differently than they did
before. So you got this justenormous group of individuals
who their research actually hastold us how we should be
teaching reading, and how thatshould look. And in this
particular issue was, yeah,let's, let's have an issue where
(33:50):
all these various individualswho really do care about not
only science, but alsoindividuals learning how to
read. Now let's have them talkabout, you know, learning how to
read and so that that's kind ofthe impetus for it. And you
know, in this field, people arealways willing to help, even
(34:11):
people who are retired, likeread lyre like, Hey, can you
come to Kansas? And he's like,Well, you know, I really don't
do any traveling for businessanymore, and I'm like, Well, why
don't you take a look at whatwe're doing here with this
blueprint? And he did. He'slike, wait a minute, let's go
see this. And he's been as heand Diane lion have been a huge
(34:31):
help and many others across thecountry, because this isn't for
us. It's not just a Kansasthing. We we can just do things
in Kansas, because this is wherewe're at, and we have a law in
Kansas, but, you know, we'rehoping that our if we have
success, which I can't imagine,that we won't I mean, granted,
there's always something thatcan happen, right? But if we're
(34:53):
successful, it's going to besomething that other states want
to emulate, you know, like theMiss. Mississippi miracle,
right? You know, people seethat. They're like, Well, how
did you do that? We want to knowhow to do that. And in reality,
you know, it's not really amiracle, is it? It's just the
science. You know, they'veapplied science, which, I guess
(35:15):
in itself, in itself, is kind ofa miracle, right? But they
applied the science. And, youknow, Mississippi still has a
lot of struggling readers.
They've got growth to do. Imean, we're not going to, no
one's going to say we've gotthis licked at this point in
time. We're in the process ofgetting things going in the
(35:36):
right direction. So
Lindsay Kemeny (35:39):
there's something that I love that you
said in in the article, it readsas science advanced idea evolved
as we evolved, our visionsharpened. And I like that
because, as you're saying, wehave all this science, but it is
evolving. And I love this idea,you know, we need to be evolving
too. And I love this idea of ourvision sharpening as we're
(36:03):
working with kids. Yes,
Unknown (36:05):
yeah. And I think that, you know, like you said, you
know, we're it's still evolving.
You know, for example, when youlook at the simple view of
reading, and the simple view ofreading came out, actually, when
I was still in my doctoraltraining, and I remember looking
at the title of it, going asimple view of reading. What are
you talking about? Nothingsimple about reading. And then
you read the article, and you'relike, Oh, I get what you're
(36:29):
talking about, right? And, youknow, I you know. Again, for
your readers who may not knowwhat the simple view of reading
is, but it's this notion ofdecoding ability, multiplied by
your language ability, helps youunderstand your reading ability,
right? So if you cannot decode,then you can't comprehend what
(36:49):
you're reading, because you'renot reading, you're not
decoding. And you know the flipis also true, like if you're a
great decoder, but you reallydon't know the language, then
you don't understand what you'rereading. And to give an example
of the latter, you know, forpeople who have taken high
school Spanish, you know,Spanish is one of those
(37:11):
languages. It's a very efficientlanguage in itself, but the
writing system is also, youknow, pretty easy to pick up on
in terms of decoding. So if youlearned how to read Spanish in
high school, you can stilldecode it because it's, you
know, what we call transparentwriting system. So the vial, the
(37:33):
vowel sounds are always going tobe the same vowel sounds. It's
not like, you know, in English,where there's many different
ways of writing a particularvowel sound. So, you know, right
now, those of individuals whoare listening who took Spanish,
like, yeah, I can, I can decodeand read pretty well. But do you
know what you're reading? Well,no, I don't know the words.
(37:55):
That's what we're talking aboutwith the language. Piece of the
simple view of reading. It takesboth the language piece and
then, you know, the decodingpiece to be able to comprehend
what you're reading. And so,yeah, all those little pieces
we're learning more and more.
You know, there are children whohave, you know, developmental
(38:17):
language disorder and haveproblems with language. We have
a lot of English languagelearners who are in the United
States, which, you know, we needfor them to learn how to read.
And, you know, we have differentdialects. You know, it's, it's,
really, is a fascinating area,truly,
Donell Pons (38:35):
yeah. And it's interesting, David, as we've
all, you know, talked, and ourbackgrounds are so very
different, but involved inreading in some way or another.
You're so right. It reaches intoso many aspects of our lives, of
people's lives, that really, youcould never get bored with this
field or with the ability tolearn more about how to improve
doing it too. So that's anotherthing. It's you're a lifelong
(38:56):
learner. If you're in the fieldand you're helping anybody, you
learn that very quickly, is thatthere is always something new to
learn. The science is evolving.
So that's you have to be peoplewho are okay with that and up to
date and ready to go there whenthe next piece comes out and
update their information. Sothat piece about evolving is
really important too. David,this has been a fantastic
conversation. We could probablylisten to you for days, because
you're just so full of wisdomabout this area. But really
(39:19):
appreciate you taking the timeto not only discuss the issue,
but also give us some broaderunderstanding right of not only
your entry point into thisfield, but then what came before
you, what's around you. So wereally appreciated you taking
the time to do that with us.
Thank you. Well,
Unknown (39:35):
thank you for giving me the opportunity. As as my
friends and family know, youdon't give them too much time
because he won't stop talking.
That's great.
Stacy Hurst (39:46):
Do you know? I think that's probably on each of
our report cards going back insome form or another. So we can
relate and appreciate that.
Thank you for podcasters.
Doesn't it? Yes, it does. Andlearning to read, right? That
language components important.
As a first grade teacher, I usedto say, give me the chatty kids.
I'll take them. Yeah, yes. Thankyou so much. And we do want to
(40:10):
end this episode by thanking ourlisteners for joining us for
this awesome episode, and wehope you'll join us next time on
another episode of literacytalks.
Narrator (40:24):
Thanks for joining us today. Literacy talks comes to
you from Reading Horizons, whereliteracy momentum begins. Visit
Reading horizons.com/literacy.
Talks to access episodes andresources to support your
journey in the science ofreading you.
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