Christopher Peek

Das heißt, du hast die Art von Studien, die Bob Slavin für Erfolg für alle gemacht hat.

Fast jedes Programm sagt, dass sie Beweise daraus haben. Es ist sehr einfach zu sagen, wir haben dieses weiße Papier, es ist im Hintergrund des Buches oder es ist im Hintergrund der Verkaufsmaterialien. Es ist viel schwieriger, diese Definition wissenschaftlich basierend zu treffen.

Einer war Success for All, der andere wurde Direktinstruktion genannt. Beide Programme wurden getestet und sie wurden immer wieder verwendet. Andere Programme konnten nicht in der gleichen Lage sein.

Der föderale Regierung ist nicht erlaubt, zu entlasten, zu empfehlen, zu mandatieren, irgendein Curriculum.

Und das geht zurück zu der Founding der Departement der Bildung. Es ist literally in der Statut geschrieben.

He wanted to do something about it.

So he actually filed a complaint with the Office of the Inspector General.

So he files a complaint and says, hey, Inspector General, you need to check out this Reading First program. I think they're violating federal law.

And Bob Slavin called for it to end.

By the very end of it, he was saying, cut funding for this program. He was so upset with it.

And they said, we want schools to be able to use a much wider variety of programs. And they changed it. They said, let's loosen the requirements. We don't need all that scientifically based reading research anymore.

As long as you make a good argument that your program derives some of its lessons from research, that counts as evidence-based.

It felt very icky by the end of Reading First.

This was, here's a guide and here's some books and fun things you might do to structure your class. So it really was the antithesis of that scripted program like Success for All.

The decisions schools and districts are making now will affect how reading is taught for the next five, ten years, maybe more.

And a lot of money is being spent. Ohio gave out more than $50 million to help districts pay for new reading programs. And most of that money is going to programs that got good ratings from Ed Reports. So, could you just start off by introducing yourself? Sure.

Eric Hirsch started off our interview by talking about the history of the organization.

But he hesitated a bit when I asked him what the influence his organization is having right now. I've seen Ed Reports come up a lot in state regulations or state laws about, you know, you should be looking to Ed Reports to figure out, is this a good program or not? And I was wondering what you make of that. Is that a good thing to have, Ed Reports and state regulations?

How do you feel about that personally?

I believe curriculum is a place to start, right?

He told me Ed Reports shouldn't be the final say on what the best reading programs are.

And Ed Reports has been telling teachers its reviews were based on that science. I found a blog post they published in 2023. It said, Ed Reports has always reviewed instructional materials for the science of reading.

Right. And recently, Ed Reports has made changes. They now include a science of reading summary with the reviews. It highlights how well programs teach foundational skills. And just a few months ago, they changed the review tool. Programs that teach the cuing strategies will now automatically fail.

No, they've already released ratings for 86 reading programs, and they are not going to go back and do those reviews again.

Well, it's clearly a problem when a program that has lots of evidence behind it, a program like Success for All, when a program like that is having such a hard time getting on state lists.

But that could be a problem, too. Rigorous studies are expensive and complex and take a long time. Lots of programs never get studied.

But there is a real risk here, that schools and districts are committing time and money to programs that aren't effective. That's the potential downside when programs that haven't been proven get popular.

What we wanted to do was focus attention on the idea again, to show people that there was an idea about reading that wasn't right, that was still in popular curriculum materials.

But as Steubenville clearly shows, it is more complex than just handing teachers a program. They got all that training. There were resistant teachers there that needed to be convinced.

Right. It's not like the answer here is that every school should be doing success for all.

Hi, Emily.

It's a pretty new organization. It's a nonprofit, and it's only 10 years old, and it's already built up a lot of clout by billing itself as a kind of consumer reports for curriculum.

They review curriculum. Teams of teachers actually do the reviews. They review not just reading curriculum, but math and science curriculum too. And they rate it. It's a red, yellow, and green system. So if you're a publisher, you want an all green rating from Ed Reports. Nearly 2,000 school districts have used its reviews to make their purchasing decisions.

And the organization says 40 publishers have actually adjusted their products in response to an Ed Reports review. This is bigger than just the new state list. EdReports was having a big influence on the publishing industry before SodaStory and the current conversation about the science of reading.

Ohio had a lot of people who listened to our podcast.

No, it was set up with something else in mind, something called the Common Core State Standards.

Common Core was a thing during the Obama administration. It was an effort to raise education standards across the country. The goal was to make sure students in different states were learning the same core skills. But it ran into the same kind of problem that George W. Bush's big education effort ran into.

Publishers were saying their programs were aligned to the Common Core, just like publishers were saying their programs were scientifically based during reading first.

and that's why EdReports was established. To review curriculum and say, yes, this curriculum really was designed with the Common Core standards in mind, or no, this curriculum wasn't. It's not aligned with the new standards.

I got a call just a couple months after Sold a Story came out from one of the top education officials saying all the executives in the department were listening to Sold a Story and they want to do something about it.

Exactly. And what I found in my reporting is that EdReports has given high marks to some programs that include the cueing strategies, which, as you know, is the opposite of what science has taught us about how kids become good readers.

So I talked to Carrie Curto. She was a literacy specialist at the State Department of Education in Rhode Island, which was one of the first states to really try to push for better reading curriculum. Rhode Island had looked at reports to come up with a list of programs that districts should be using. And Carrie had been in the job for just a couple of weeks when she had a jaw-dropping moment.

She was seeing programs telling teachers to say things like, read the pictures, and to use cues other than the sounds of the letters.

Yep. The Common Core Standards basically lay out what kids should know and be able to do at each grade level. I have a copy of the English Language Arts Standards right here. It's 66 pages long. And here's an example of one of the standards for first grade. It says that a first grader should be able to ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

But the Common Core Standards don't say anything about how to do that. They don't say anything about how to teach. They just say what to teach.

Right. Even some of the people who were once supporters of Ed Reports are recognizing this conflict now between the science of reading and the Common Core standards. I talked to David Lieben. He's an educator with more than 50 years of experience.

As you can tell, he likes to joke around a bit too. David Lieben worked with Ed Reports when it was first set up. He thought the organization was needed because of that problem we mentioned earlier, publishers slapping Common Core stickers on their products and no one checking to see, is this program really living up to that label? But David Lieben now says Ed Reports' methodology is flawed.

I'm calling for a renewed focus on literacy. He's saying a big proposal is coming. We're going to make changes to how reading is taught in Ohio.

He says one of the biggest problems with Ed Reports is that some programs that are backed by rigorous research are not getting those coveted all-green ratings. They've got good studies that show they're effective, but Ed Reports doesn't factor studies into their ratings. That's not part of the review process.

Right. And I should note, too, that both David Lieben and Carrie Curto, the woman from Rhode Island, they're both now associated with organizations that do their own curriculum reviews.

because of what we learned in the previous episode. Success For All is not just a reading curriculum. It's a whole school reform program. So I asked an Ed Reports spokesperson about this, and she told me that reviewing just the reading curriculum wouldn't have provided a complete picture of Success For All. So Ed Reports decided not to review it.

And this bill says the department has to come up with a list of programs that are aligned with the science of reading.

Success for All was actually on one state list, Arizona. But Melissa Weber-Mayer, the education official in Ohio, she told me that her team didn't think Arizona's review process was rigorous enough.

And we know Success for All has that evidence. But most states are not looking at evidence to decide what belongs on their list. Some of them are looking at ed reports instead. And that's why when Ohio's list first came out, Success for All wasn't on it. The program has never been reviewed by Ed Reports.

All right. See you soon.