| As Florida lawmakers barrel ahead with a spate of hot-button education changes, such as voucher expansion and pronoun restriction, it's easy to miss that they've got their eyes on at least one core academic issue, too. Long focused on boosting children's reading performance, the Legislature has proposed a measure (HB 7039) that aims to build on progress monitoring by figuring out where students are academically deficient and requiring plans of attack. One of the key planks is to ensure that youngsters learn to read words in school by using phonics first and foremost. Backers say it's all about relying on the science of reading.
— Jeffrey S. Solochek, jsolochek@tampabay.com |
| There's a national move afoot to promote phonics. It's not universally loved. |
| Introducing the bill, sponsor Rep. Dana Trabulsy, a Fort Pierce Republican, noted that half of Florida students are not on grade level in reading despite Florida's decades-long accountability based school model. Long term success depends on foundational literacy, she said, and in prioritizing phonics, among other steps, this will lead to improvements. "We're going to get students on grade level with this bill," Trabulsy said. Her bill comes with the strong support of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future and ExcelinEd, partner organizations that have promoted a model policy that emphasizes the science of reading and phonics. Kymyona Burk, an ExcelinEd senior policy fellow, explains that there's a body of evidence that shows how children learn to read, and it goes back almost 40 years. It includes five major components, of which phonics is a critical piece along with fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, she said. It's what kids saw watching Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow, she said, and it works. "Once you've learned these skills, you can read any word in the text," said Burk, who previously was state literacy director at the Mississippi Department of Education. "We don't want to teach the strategy of guessing." HB 7039 would prohibit the use of three-cueing, which is to help children figure out a word even if they cannot read it by using visuals, meaning and syntax. States across the nation have turned to phonics and the science of reading with renewed vigor since 2019, when Mississippi had strong results on the "Nation's Report Card" after moving in that direction. Oregon is another state headed down that path.
Of course, there's a but. Some experts refer to it as the "so-called science of reading," and argue there's no true evidence that proves phonics is a cure all. David Reinking of the University of Georgia and Victoria Risko of Vanderbilt University, for instance, recently published a piece provocatively titled, "Legislating Phonics: Settled Science or Political Polemics?"
Phonics is an important part of learning to read, Risko said, but there's nothing to show that it should be the only approach. Some students respond better to other ways, she said, and so it makes little sense to teach everyone the same in lockstep.
"It is foolish to rule out any help a child might need to decode a word," said Reinking, a past president of the Literary Research Association.
Furman University education professor Paul Thomas suggested there exists an echo chamber of journalists and others pointing to the same stories repeatedly to propel the phonics message, which he deemed ideological. He suggested that third-grade student retention has helped drive up fourth-grade reading test scores as much if not more than heavy doses of phonics, noting that has been a trait of many states moving in this direction.
At the end of the chain, Thomas said, is a "market grab" for companies that have pushed phonics-based materials, which some states such as South Carolina have budgeted millions of dollars to pay for. "What we really need to do is create a teaching and learning environment so teachers can use their professional knowledge to provide the students what they need," Thomas said. But some argue that such a model winds up meaning different things to different educators, Burk among them. She argues that while efforts such as building children's background knowledge and showing them how to use visual cues help with understanding content, they do not get to the core issue of reading text. Showing someone a picture of a ball is very different than knowing how to decipher the letters B-A-L-L, she said. The language in the legislation is there to make sure loopholes don't allow districts to adopt curriculum that allows children to guess, she said. "With the right materials, teachers will be able to build for students and differentiate," she said. "But you don't want to skip phonics." HB 7039 passed the full House unanimously, and now is in the Senate awaiting consideration. |
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