Update - 30th August 2024
Help Alberta Kids Read
When Alberta school boards push approaches to reading instruction that fail to teach kids to read, it doesn’t just waste taxpayer money.
It doesn’t just betray the trust of parents.
It hurts kids.
Struggling readers are more likely to say they are sad, lonely, depressed, and angry; they are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to enter the criminal justice system.
Especially for boys, behaviour issues often first emerge as a way to cover for lack of literacy.
And virtually every life outcome is worse for kids who do not learn to read.
So, when Alberta school boards require assessments, resources,and teacher training based on “three-cueing” strategies that are shown to hamper children’s long-term reading ability, they are hurting kids.
“Three-cueing” teaches teachers that the best readers are like detectives asking lots of questions about the context and following hunches to lead them to the best suspects for the word they are trying to read.
Neuroscience and experimentation show us the exact opposite is true.
Those “detective” strategies are coping methods poor readers use.
The best readers are the best at quickly determining the exact word they are reading, even without any context at all, by connecting it to the sounds they know from spoken language.
And teaching kids these “three-cueing” strategies and letter sounds together does not take the best of both methods.
It shackles kids to poor reading strategies that will fail them when the words get longer and the pictures go away.
So-called “balance” between teaching that works and teaching that doesn’t work is no virtue.
More perplexing: the Science of Reading that teaches reading through letter sounds and rejects “three-cueing” entirely is required in the Alberta Curriculum.
That’s why it’s troubling that a 2022 Alberta Education survey found that 55.7% of the school authorities who responded to the survey use the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment system - making it easily the most popular assessment in Alberta.
A high-quality study in Minnesota showed that this assessment performs little better, and by some measures worse, than flipping a coin at accurately identifying kids with trouble reading.
This assessment then ushers these children into Fountas & Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention
Research shows students receiving this intervention are, over the long term, worse off than if they had no extra “help”.
But perhaps worse is that all this is married to teacher training that can hornswoggle even the most well-meaning teacher into believing they are “helping” kids they are actually hurting.
These teachers and administrators frequently tell parents who sense something isn’t right that the parents must be the real problem.
As elected representatives, school boards should set the tone that the voice of parents matter more than vendors with magic beans to sell.
And they should start signalling their commitment to parents and taxpayers by dropping Fountas & Pinnell.
It’s long past time to Help Alberta Kids Read.
If you agree, please sign the petition, calling on Alberta School Boards to immediately cease the use of all "three-cueing" methods.
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It became quite evident in my first years in the classroom that Phonics and phonetic decoding is the “only” true and tested method of teaching young readers to read AND comprehend. The old hardcopy “Hooked on Phonics” reading program was a marvelous resource to assist my own children in learning to read and comprehend material as well as my struggling students.
Finally, being read to by an adult in the early years of children’s development is a keystone for the love of reading.
Sincerely,
Daryl B. Sutter M.C., M. A., B.Ed., B.A.
Sutter & Associates Ltd.