Neurodiversity — the idea that the organization, the biological structure of the brain, the way we think and how we discover the complexity of the world varies between people in diverse ways, with divergent strengths, rather than simply on a linear scale between high and low normative performance — guarantees that some people will adapt to specific challenges more easily than others. Neurodiversity is a strength of genetically diverse populations and a recognition that there is not an evolutionary optimal function of individual brains. This social value has very little penetration into the way experts and parents talk about the foundational skills of reading.
Forty-two states in the U.S. have adopted the Common Core State Standards which build on the foundation of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NEAP) frameworks in reading and writing, and the NEAP’s definition of reading is based largely on the 1998 National Research Council (NRC) and its Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children.1 All members of the Committee agreed that “reading should be defined as a process of getting meaning from print, using knowledge about the written alphabet and about the sound structure of oral language for purposes of achieving understanding.” 2 A review of research in the last 20 years leads me to challenge the second half of that definition and to call for a modification to the Common Core State Standards.
The “Reading: Foundational Skills” standards for kindergarten contain eight competencies of phonological awareness and phonics skills with only one reference to reading words by sight — ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.C — which is that kindergartners should be able to “Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).” This weighting skews the conception of reading’s foundational skills towards phonics, and it is the de facto framework for how reading is discussed among teachers and between teachers and parents. However, in 2005 Dr. Linnea Ehri wrote, “Some people limit the term sight word to refer only to high-frequency words or to irregularly spelled words. However, this is not accurate. Any word that is read sufficiently often becomes a sight word that is read from memory.” 3 She continues with evidence that “sight words” are not a reading strategy — not simply one approach to specific words — but that reading words by sight happens automatically and any other fall-back strategy “disrupts comprehension, at least momentarily.” 4 Fluent reading is not well-practiced phonemic recoding (a.k.a. decoding or phonological decoding), or “sounding out” of letters, or purposeful use of the sound structure of oral language to reconstruct letters into spoken words, and strategies which disrupt comprehension work against getting meaning from print.
Christina Hartmann was born profoundly deaf. She learned to read before receiving cochlear implants at age 6,5 before she had any evidence that oral language had a sound structure and even before she knew what sound is. She is an avid reader and prolific writer. She has been published in Time, Newsweek, Slate, and Vox and she is a five-time Quora Top Writer. Yet, following the NRC’s definition in Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, Christina Hartmann does not read. The way she learned to read is profoundly different than how reading is taught in school, as prescribed by the NRC. It is tempting to view Hartmann as an exception, divergent, an edge case, she is after all ‘disabled’, but not only would this reinforce my claim that the value of neurodiversity has very little influence on how experts talk about reading, it is counter to NRC’s claim to “focus on mechanisms for providing the best possible situation for every child.” 6
The prescribed method of instruction does work well for a fraction of children, but not as extensively as claimed by the NRC, which wrote, “Of course, most children learn to read fairly well.” 7 Nearly two in three children struggle with reading and test below proficiency benchmarks in the 4th grade, and four years later in 8th Grade 25% of students are still reading at or below 4th grade proficiency.8 The NRC’s response is to double down; “Children who are having difficulty learning to read do not, as a rule, require qualitatively different instruction from children who are ‘getting it’.” 9 But the evidence is that some children respond very well to phonics instruction and others do not — neurodiversity. Most students do not reach proficiency benchmarks while others do with ease.
Environment cannot be the only factor creating struggling readers. Siblings often do demonstrate that there are significant differences in apparent efficacy of instruction at the same school, even by the same teacher. Some propose that ‘print exposure’ is the vital ingredient struggling readers with good instruction lack. “However,” wrote Dr. Elsje van Bergen and her colleagues at University of Oxford and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, “there are vast individual differences in children’s reading habits. It has been estimated that, whereas avid readers read as many as 1.8 million words per year, reluctant readers read only about 8,000 words for their own enjoyment.” 10 Dr. van Bergen, in a 2018 study of over 11,000 identical and fraternal twins from the Netherlands born between 1994 and 2004, asks the question, “do children who read more become better readers (print exposure→reading), do poorer readers avoid reading (reading→print exposure) or is there a reciprocal relationship between reading and print exposure?” 10 Their result: “Our findings refute the common belief that there is an influence of print exposure on reading ability, or that there are reciprocal influences between them. Interestingly, according to a Twitter poll, only 6% of people responding thought that reading ability→print exposure.” 11 Given this finding, if print exposure is a proxy for reading ability, a 1988 study by Richard Anderson et al. shows just how big of a gap this one-method-fits-all approach creates.
Anderson studied the reading habits of 155 fifth grade students in Illinois. The Achievement test scores of the study population were above the national average, and “although there were some blue collar, low-income, and minority children in the sample, these groups were underrepresented in terms of their proportions in the nation as a whole.” 12 Students in the 70th percentile and above read twice as much or more as students in the 50th percentile and below. Print exposure drops off rapidly between the highest and lowest percentiles, with a 46x difference between the 90th and 10th percentiles. Clear advantages in reading speed and length of texts are also apparent, further bolstering the idea that reading ability→print exposure.
A focus on deficiencies is not the best way to move forward, this gap is due in large part to a focus on strengths that only a fraction of the population enjoy. The NRC wrote, “there is a point in a child's growth when we expect ‘real reading’ to start. Children are expected, without help, to read some unfamiliar texts, relying on the print.” 13 Phonemic recoding is seen as the only acceptable path to ‘real reading’, never minding that it’s not real reading. Dr. Kate Nation, in an otherwise excellent article on the development of word reading skill, falls into this same language; “although phonological decoding might initially be effortful and laborious, by forcing the translation from print to sound, it provides an opportunity to acquire word-specific orthographic information about the word, its spelling pattern and its pronunciation. This will then be available on future encounters with the word, lessening the reliance on overt and effortful phonological decoding.” 14 Phonemic recoding is ‘effortful’ and ‘laborious’ and not universally forbidding, it is debilitatingly severe for so many, yet it is still forced on every student. Learning to read words by sight is viewed as a crutch, a handicap, a deficient strategy, and not ‘real reading’, so they are left to founder in frustration, floundering in isolation. The last thing a student wants to hear in the midst of their frustration is ‘sound it out’, the adult might as well be saying, “you’re on your own.” The isolation struggling readers feel is real. They often fail or feel broken down when the skill other children master so easily continually evades them.
Unfortunately, a focus on deficiencies is the de facto approach when talking about preventing reading difficulties in young children. The NRC admits that “it seems logical to suspect that poor readers may have phonological processing problems” only to retrench; “A large number of students who should be capable of reading ably given adequate instruction are not doing so, suggesting that the instruction available to them is not appropriate.” 15 Acknowledging that ‘phonological processing problems’ do exist, the NRC uses language such as ‘disruption of specific brain systems’, ‘underdevelopment’, ‘disabilities’, ‘deficit’, and flawed ‘delivery’. Is it any wonder that dyslexic children often feel broken and worthless despite growing evidence that their neurodiversity is normal, fully developed, and advantageous?
As part of a push to recognize the value of neurodiversity and talk more positively about it when experts and parents talk about reading, I propose a change to ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.D of the Common Core, which currently reads:
“Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.”
Acknowledging that words are visual objects, not simply the sound structure of oral language in print, and that sight words are not simply a crutch, while also acknowledging that the letter-wise attention, the kind which phonemic recoding forces upon a student, provides an opportunity to acquire word-specific orthographic information benefiting word recognition, I propose that ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.D be changed to read:
“Distinguish between orthographically similar words by identifying the letters that differ.”
This is a much easier task for struggling readers and arguably just as beneficial. Phonics has a place in our curriculum for foundational reading skills, but it needs to be seen for what it is — a viable path to fluency for many, a debilitating hurdle for just as many, and not an integral part of ‘real reading’. Support should always be offered to students whenever needed and possible, even when it might be seen as evading an opportunity to practice phonemic recoding; self-correction or self-discovery via phonological decoding alone is not a value in and of itself. Reading with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension should always be the primary goal.
Works Cited
1 Page 49,
The 2016–2017 National Assessment Governing Board. Reading Framework for the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress. 2017. Retrieved from https://www.nagb.gov/naep-frameworks/reading.html.
2 Page vi,
National Research Council, 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf.
3 Page 169,
Ehri, Linnea C. "Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues." Scientific Studies of reading, vol. 9, no. 2, 2005, pp. 167-188. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4.
4 Page 170,
Ehri, Linnea C. "Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues." Scientific Studies of reading, vol. 9, no. 2, 2005, pp. 167-188. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4.
5
Hartmann, Christina. “How are deaf people taught to read?” Quora, 2013. Retrieved from http://qr.ae/TU1J5D.
6 Page vii, emphasis added,
National Research Council, 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf.
7 Page 1,
National Research Council, 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf.
8
Fugal, Russ. “To Get More Children Reading, Let Them Experiment Through Play.” 2018. Retrieved from http://www.sara.ai/ebook/play.html.
9 Page 12,
National Research Council, 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf.
10 Page 1,
van Bergen, Elsje, et al. “Why Do Children Read More? The Influence of Reading Ability on Voluntary Reading Practices.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Oct. 2018. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12910.
11 Page 7,
van Bergen, Elsje, et al. “Why Do Children Read More? The Influence of Reading Ability on Voluntary Reading Practices.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Oct. 2018. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12910.
12 Page 287,
Anderson, Richard C., et al. “Growth in Reading and How Children Spend Their Time Outside of School.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 3, 1988, pp. 285–303. JSTOR. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/748043.
13 Page 15,
National Research Council, 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf.
14 Page 2,
Nation, Kate. “Nurturing a Lexical Legacy: Reading Experience Is Critical for the Development of Word Reading Skill.” Npj Science of Learning, vol. 2, no. 1, 2017. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-017-0004-7.
15 Pages 24–25,
National Research Council, 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf.