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Moats, Louisa Cook
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading
Instruction.
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Washington, DC.
2000-10-00
32p.

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1627 K St., NW, Suite 600,
Washington, DC 20006. Tel: 888-823-7474; Fax: 202-223-9226.
For full text:
http://www.edexcellence.net/library/wholelang/moats.html.
Opinion Papers (120)MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.
Position Papers; Primary Education; Public Schools; *Reading
Instruction; *Reading Research; *Reading Skills; Student
Needs; Theory Practice Relationship; *Whole Language
Approach*Balanced Reading Instruction

ABSTRACTThis position paper contends that the whole language
approach to reading instruction has been disproved by research and evaluation
but still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials forclassroom use, some states' language-arts standards and other policy
documents, teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs, and theprofessional context in which teachers work. The paper finds that many who
pledge allegiance to "balanced reading" continue to misunderstand reading
development and to deliver "poorly conceived, ineffective reading
instruction." It argues that "rooting out whole language" from readingclassrooms calls for effort on eight separate fronts. The paper describes
what whole language is, why it is contradicted by scientific studies, how it
continues in education, and what should be done to correct the situation.
(Contains a glossary and 57 notes.) (NKA)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

THOMAS B.

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Dedicated to the memory ofJeanne Sternlicht Chall
1921-1999)1

America's foremost authority on
how children learn to read.
She taught us tolook for the evidence.
\II

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Whole Language Lives On:
The Illusion of "Balanced"
Reading Instruction
byLouisa Cook Moatscm.-- THOMAS B.

ORDHAMOUNDATIONOUTSIDE THE BOX

4

Table of Contents
Forewordiii

Executive Summaryvii

Glossaryviii

Introduction and Summary

1

What Is Whole Language?

2

A Typical Whole-Language Class

6

What's Wrong with Whole Language?

6

The Consequences of Whole Language for Teachers and Children

8Whole Language Persists

11

What Next?

14

Notes

17

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction i

5Foreword
Regular readers of this foundation's publications and web site know we believe strongly that
schools should utilize "best practices" that are supported by scientific research and should eschew
classroom methods that do not work. In no domain of education is that contrast more vivid than inteaching young children to read. No domain has been studied more intensely. None has yielded

clearer and more definitive findings about what works and what does not. Yet no domain is more
vulnerable to the perpetuation of bad ideas and failed methods.

Three things are clear about early reading:First, it isn't being handled well in American schools. Four in ten of our fourth-graders lack basic
reading skills. Tens of millions of adults are weak readers. Millions of children are needlessly classified as "disabled" when, in fact, their main problem is that nobody taught them to read when they
were five and six years old.

Second, we know what works for nearly all children when it comes to imparting basic reading
skills to them. (The scientific consensus is admirably summarized in the pages that follow.)

Third, we also know what doesn't work for most children. It's called "whole language."
Yet whole language persists, despite efforts by policymakers and reading experts to root it out.
Today, though, it often disguises itself, not using the term "whole language" but, rather, wearing the

fig leaf of "balanced" instruction. A lot of people who have a casual acquaintance with the research
have persuaded themselves that balanced reading instruction means a little of this, a little of that.
Take a cup of phonics from one cupboard, add a half-pint of whole language from the fridge, andthe resulting blend will succeed with children while avoiding the battles and conflicts of the "reading wars." Everyone will be happy, and all will be well.

The problem is that it doesn't work that way. What's going on in many places in the name of "balance" or "consensus" is that the worst practices of whole language are persisting, continuing toWhole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction iii

6inflict boundless harm on young children who need to learn to read. How and why that is happen-

ingand how and why such practices are misguided and harmfulare what this report is about.
In its pages, Louisa Cook Moats describes the whole-language approach; shows why it doesn't
work and how it has been disproven by careful research; and explains why it nonetheless persists inpractice and what should be done about that.

We don't kid ourselves. Rooting out failed methods of reading instruction from U.S. primary classrooms won't be easy. Those roots run deep, perhaps now deeper than ever, considering their new
coating of "balance." Yet Dr. Moats persuasively makes the case that this is a task that must be
taken on.

Louisa Moats is currently project director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development (NICHD) Early Interventions Project in Washington, DC, a multiyear study of earlyreading instruction. She is one of the world's leading voices for the application of reading researchin teacher preparation and classroom instruction. After receiving her doctorate in reading at
Harvard, Dr. Moats worked as a psychologist and consultant with individuals, schools, and education agencies. She assisted the California State Board of Education in implementing the California
Reading Initiative. Her recent book, Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers (Brookes
Publishing, 2000), is the basis for the innovative courses she teaches at the Greenwood Institute in
Putney, Vermont, and Simmons College in Boston. Author of several other books and numerous

journal articles, she currently serves as a national board member of the International Dyslexia
Association. Readers wishing to contact Dr. Moats directly may write her at the NICHD Early
Interventions Project, 825 North Capitol Street, NE, 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20002, or e-mailher at l.moats @worldnet.att.net.

We are honored to dedicate this report to the memory of Jeanne Sternlicht Chall, who taught not
only Louisa Moats but also hundreds of other reading experts and teachers. Professor (and professor emerita) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1965 until her death in 1999 at theage of 78, Jeanne Chall was, quite simply, the nation's foremost authority on how children learn toread and how to teach them that most basic of basic skills. Her great book, Learning to Read: The
Great Debate, first published in 1967, was the first to enunciate clearly the essential elements of
the research synthesis that has since been refined and confirmed by, among others, the National
iv

Louisa Cook Moats

Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and therecent National Reading Panel. Endlessly curious, astoundingly prolific, tireless in her pursuit of

the truth and her capacity to propagate it through her many students and disciples, passionate in her
commitment to the effective education of children (especially disadvantaged youngsters), Jeanne

Chall embodied superb research skills and a rare sense of how to turn scholarship into practice.

We're deeply grateful for her contributionand we miss her.
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a private foundation that supports research, publications,and action projects in elementary/secondary education reform at the national level and in the
Dayton area. Further information can be obtained from our web site (www.edexcellence.net) or by
writing us at 1627 K Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006. (We can also be e-mailed

through our web site.) This report is available in full on the Foundation's web site, and hard copies
can be obtained by calling 1-888-TBF-7474 (single copies are free). The Foundation is not connected to or sponsored by Fordham University.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., President
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Washington, DC
October 2000

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instructionv

Executive Summary
The whole-language approach to reading instruction continues to be widely used in the primary
grades in U.S. schools, despite having been disproven time and again by careful research and evaluation. Whole language still pervades textbooks for teachers, instructional materials for classroomuse, some states' language-arts standards and other policy documents, teacher licensing requirements and preparation programs, and the professional context in which teachers work. Yet reading
science is clear: young children need instruction in systematic, synthetic phonics in which they aretaught sound-symbol correspondences singly, directly, and explicitly. Although most state education agencies, school districts, and federal agencies claim to embrace "balanced" reading instructionimplying that worthy ideas and practices from both whole-language and code-emphasis
approaches have been successfully integratedmany who pledge allegiance to balanced reading
continue to misunderstand reading development and to deliver poorly conceived, ineffective
instruction.
Almost every premise advanced by whole language about how reading is learned has been contradicted by scientific investigations that have established the following facts:
Learning to read is not a "natural" process. Most children must be taught to read through astructured and protracted process in which they are made aware of sounds and the symbols
that represent them, and then learn to apply these skills automatically and attend to meaning.

Our alphabetic writing system is not learned simply from exposure to print. Phonologicalawareness is primarily responsible for the ability to sound words out. The ability to use
phonics and to sound words out, in turn, is primarily responsible for the development ofcontext-free word-recognition ability, which in turn is primarily responsible for the development of the ability to read and comprehend connected text.
Spoken language and written language are very different; mastery of each requires unique
skills.

The most important skill in early reading is the ability to read single words completely,
accurately, and fluently.
Context is not the primary factor in word recognition.
Despite overwhelming evidence, the reading field rushed to embrace unfounded whole-language
practices between 1975 and 1995. The effects have been far-reaching, particularly for those students who are most dependent on effective instruction within the classroom.
Whole language persists today for several reasons. A pervasive lack of rigor in university education
departments has allowed much nonsense to infect reading-research symposia, courses for teachers,
and journals. Many reading programs have come to covertly embody whole-language principles.
Additionally, many state standards and curricular frameworks still reflect whole-language ideas.
Rooting out whole language from reading classrooms calls for effort on eight separate fronts:
1.

Every state should have language-arts content standards and curricular frameworks for each
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

9

vii

2.
3.

4.
5.
6.
7.

8.

grade from kindergarten through third grade that are explicitly based on solid readingresearch findings.
State assessments should be calibrated to show the effects of reading instruction as delineated in well-written state standards.
State accountability systems should emphasize the attainment of grade-appropriate reading,spelling, and writing skills by third grade.
States should adopt rigorous licensing exams for new and veteran teachers alike.
Alternative teacher-preparation programs should be encouraged.
Traditional teacher-preparation programs of education should focus on training and retention of effective teachers.
State-guided textbook adoptions should focus on the alignment of the material with research
evidence about what works best, and publishers should be required to show for whom theirproduct works and under what conditions.
Journalists and policymakers need to examine closely instructional programs and packages
offered in the name of "balanced" reading.

Glossarycode-emphasis: An approach to reading instruction in which lessons are organized around the systematic teaching of letter-sound correspondences and patterns, and children are taught to sound out
words using phonic knowledge.
graphophonic: A whole-language term that refers to the written spellings for individual speechsounds, more properly termed sound-symbol or phoneme-grapheme associations.
holism: The philosophy of teaching reading that values preservation of the whole word over segmentation of the word or other language entities into parts or synthesis of the whole from the parts.

morphemes: The smallest meaningful units in language, such as the prefix, root, and suffix in
ob-serv-ance.
orthography: The writing system for a language. English is an alphabetic, phonemic, and morphemic orthography; Chinese characters are a logographic orthography.
phonemes: The smallest sound units (consonants and vowels) that combine to make the word of alanguage, for example /sh/, /e/, /1/ in "shell."phonological: Having to do with the speech sound system of a language, including the production
and interpretation of the sound patterns of language.

viii

Louisa Cook Moats

10

Introduction and Summary
Here is what reading science actually tells
In policy circles, the storm over readingus
about
effective literacy instruction:
instruction would seem to have calmed. Stateagencies, large school districts, and the U.S.
All children need explicit, systematic
Department of Education all claim to
instruction in phonics and exposure toembrace balanced reading instruction. The
rich literature, both fiction and nonficconcept of balance implies, in turn, that wortion.
thy ideas and practices from both whole-lanAlthough children need instruction inguage and code-emphasis approaches to readphonics in early reading development,
ing have been successfully integrated into aneven then, attention to meaning, comeclectic mix that should go down easily withprehension strategies, language develteachers and kids. Educators who wish to
opment, and writing are essential.
take no stand in the reading wars may safely
At all times, developing children's
embrace a little of each perspective and claim
interest and pleasure in reading mustthat what they are doing is both based on "thebe as much a focus as developing
latest research" and grounded in a philosophitheir reading skills.'
cal synthesis between two previously warring
positions.
Well-done studies of reading instruction
Appearances can be deceiving, however,support systematic, synthetic phonics inand painless solutions are often wrong.
which children are taught sound-symbol corUnfortunately, many who pledge allegiancerespondences singly, directly,
to balanced reading continue
and explicitly.' Further, suchto misunderstand reading
Unfortunately, manystudies show that children
development and to deliver
who
pledgeallegianceshould be taught directly how
poorly conceived, ineffective
to blend those soundinstruction. In fact, despite
to "balanced" readingspellings (such as the /ch/,numerous claims by people incontinue to misand /ck/ in "chick") until
the field, the deep division
understandreadingthey can decode almost any
between reading science andunknown word. This instrucwhole-language ideology' hasdevelopment and totion should be part of, andnot been bridged. Probably it
deliver poorly
linked to, a complete instruccannot and should not be. In
tional program that includes
conceived, ineffective
my view, a marriage of thesephoneme awareness, plentiful
perspectives is neither possiinstruction.
reading to build fluency,
ble nor desirable. It is too
vocabulary development, andeasy for practitioners, while
guided oral reading to build comprehension.
endorsing "balance," to continue teachingNote, though, that this prescription is notwhole language without ever understanding
equivalent to an eclectic combination of
the most important research findings about
whole language and phonics. Whole-language
reading or incorporating those findings into
approaches by definition minimize or omit
their classroom practice. Wrong-headed ideas
direct, systematic teaching of language strucabout reading continue to characterize textture (phoneme awareness, spelling patterns
books, reading course syllabi, classroom
and rules, grammar, and so forth) in the nameinstructional materials, state language-arts
of preserving an unbroken focus on reading
standards, and policy documents.
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

11

Ifor meaning. To the onlooker, these points
may sound trivial; in the classroom, however,such distinctions have profound consequences.
True, reading policy and practice havebeen righted to some extent since the mid1990s when California's panic over low reading achievement propelled radical alterationsof that state's standards, assessments, curriculum, and criteria for adopting instructional
materials and licensing teachers. California's
policies on early reading are now more
explicit and more compatible with reading
science than perhaps any state but Texas. Yet
resistance to the California reading initiative
has been fierce, especially in the state universities whose faculties have denounced thelegislative changes and continue to promote
ideas and programs that are saturated withwhole-language ideology, now disguised
under other names. Some whole-language
defenders claim that they have always advocated teaching both phonics and comprehension, and thus revision of their understandings about reading is not necessary.' Others
insist that they understand the importance ofphonological skills in early reading, but they

then fail to practice or teach them systematically.' Still others confirm that phonologicalskills are important for learning to read, evenas they caution teachers that phonemic
awareness and phonics instruction can be
dangerous, boring, ineffective, or irrelevant,and shouldn't be overdone. Such a tone
echoes even through Teaching Children toRead, the recent report of the National
Reading Panel.' Where sound policy is aheadof practice, whole language may appear to be
dying. Inside the classroom, however, it's notdead at all.
The mission of this paper is to describe
what whole language is, why it is contradicted by scientific studies,' how it continues in
education, and what should be done to correctthat situation. So long as whole-language
ideas influence classroom practice to any
great extent, students who are most dependent on effective instruction inside the classroom stand to lose. Recognizing and confronting bankrupt ideas and practices, eventhough they are masquerading under benign
terms such as balanced reading, continues tobe an important mission for education leadersand policymakers.

What Is Whole Language?
Even at its most popular, whole language
defied definition by those who attempted to
study it objectively.' Among the publicationsof whole-language advocates, one finds
agreement that it is primarily a system ofbeliefs and intentions.' It embraces a set ofpractices in teaching reading and writing thatare derived from a more general philosophyof teaching and learning. Relying on theory
derived largely from introspection into theirown mental processes, Ken Goodman andFrank Smith in the late 1960s advanced thenotion that meaning and purpose should be
the salient goals in early reading instruction.'°Observing that adults appear to process the2

written word without recoding it letter by letter or sound by sound, and claiming that children should learn to read as naturally as theylearn to speak, Smith asserted that the decomposition of words into sounds was pointless;that attention to letters was unnecessary andmeaningless; that letter-sound correspondences were "jabberwocky" to be avoided;
and that skill development was largely boring, repetitive, nonsensical, and unrelated todeveloping real readers." Smith, Goodman,
and their disciples pushed ideas that were
eagerly and readily embraced by progressive
educators turned off by drab basal readers,'mechanistic drills, and the knowledge that theLouisa Cook Moats

12

Although this traditional practice may bebasal readers in use had not solved all of theirworthwhile, "shared reading" in whole laninstructional challenges. Teachers were perguage has replaced instruction in how to readsuaded that the cause of most reading failure
the words sound by sound. Children are
was insufficient emphasis on reading real
expected to figure out for themselves the conbooks for real purposes. By the mid-1980s,
nection between the letters and the sounds ofschools were ready to throw out basal readthe words as the adult points to them. Thereers, phonics workbooks, spelling programs,
is no further explication of how the lettersand other "canned" material so that teachers
represent words. The assumption that chilcould create individualized reading instrucdren learn like adults also translates into stution with "authentic" children's literature.
dent choice of reading material, a focus on
The International Reading Association
advanced reading comprehension strategies(IRA) and the National Council for Teachers
foryoung children, avoidance of readingof English vigorously promoted the philosogroups or sequential oral
phy and practices of whole
reading,
and ample time inlanguage. Publishing houses,
school for independent silent
university reading departWhole-language advoreading in the company ofments, state education agencates believe that teach- others (Drop Everything andcies, and professional develRead!). These activities are
opment providers jumped on
ers who teach compothe instructional core of athe bandwagon. The ideas
nentskillsandwhowhole-language curriculum,
were disseminated throughnot ancillary components.
make reading a conInternet connections, teacher
Spelling, like reading, isjournals that do not requirescious process may
meant to happen by having
articles to meet standards of
spoil
the
reading
expechildren
imitate the stages
scientific accuracy, courses
and characteristics of adultrience for children.
and textbooks used in schools
writing. Debbie Powell andof education, and instructionDavid Hornsby, in a bestal manuals for teachers.
selling handbook for teachRecently published books anders, state, "We feel that there are no stages ofarticles' continue to characterize the orthodevelopment in terms of the strategies
doxy of whole language as follows:
spellers use because the strategies beginningChildren and adults use similar strategies
spellers use are the same as those of mature
to read and spell. Whole-language believers
spellers."
assert that children process print and compreLearning to read and spell is just likehend it like adults. Children will learn fromlearning to talk. All language is naturally
imitating adult reading. The teacher is aacquired, according to whole-language devomodel of adult literacy, and modeling is atees. Reading is analogous to listening; chilmethod for teaching children. Thus, thedren's brains are focused on meaning as lanteacher is encouraged to sit in front of theguage is processed, not on the structure orclass and to be seen reading silently for a porform of language. To focus instead on struction of each day in which the children are
ture and form is unnatural and unnecessary.
also to be reading silently or in pairs. The
Children will extract the structure and form
teacher is also to read aloud, pointing to theof print if they are exposed to it sufficiently
print in a big book, as children follow along.
in the context of meaning-making activities,
The children may point to the words as thejustas they have extracted the rules ofteacher reads them. The passage is read sevphonology and syntax in oral language witheral times this way until it is memorized.'
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction 3

13

out any formal instruction. Thus, the teacher
language classroom, but it is not taught first,
is instructed to stress the meaning of what is
foremost, or formally. The teacher is tobeing read, to ask always if a word the childobserve errors ("miscues") children are makmisread "makes sense," and to emphasize
ing while reading text and is then to provide
imitative reading of "whole, authentic texts""mini-lessons" on the word pattern or soundeven if the child cannot read them indepensymbol correspondence the children misseddently. The acquisition of the alphabetic code
while reading." The children's errors dictate
is a minor concern because it will happen if
what will be taught. The goal is to read a spechildren have a purpose for learning it.
cific text, not to learn skills that may generalPhoneme awareness, phonics, spelling,ize to all texts.
punctuation, and other skills of written lanToo much phonics instruction is harmful
guage can be learned "natuto children, so keep it unobrally." "Most children will
trusive. In whole-language
According to wholelearn to read and write withorthodoxy, phonics is seen as
no explicit instruction inlanguage approaches,a distraction, an interference
phonics and spelling," wholethat prevents real readingteaching all the letterlanguage experts advise.'from occurring. Phonics andsound correspondences, other instruction in compoThe word "naturally," which
connotes a wholesome andnent reading skills are necesand teaching children
spontaneous processsary evils that divert children
the skills to sound out
unspoiled by human tamperfrom reading authentic text
an entire word,ing, means without deliberate
and thinking creatively about
practice. Natural learning is
its content. Teachers areis unnecessary.
playful, incidental, and easy.
warned that if children
Phoneme awareness will hapreceive too much phonics
pen if children play rhyming games; spelling
instruction outside of a meaningful context,
will happen if children write; word recognithey will become "word callers" who do nottion will happen if children follow the print
understand the real purposes of reading. Skillas the adult reads; and comprehension will
lessons are to be unobtrusive, brief, and, if
happen if children's curiosity is piqued. The
possible, disguised. Teaching phonics should
teacher needn't follow a structure or
be a covert operation.
sequence; she is to share, guide, and facilitate
Children should construct their own
as the child discovers how reading works.
insights into language. The skilled whole-lanPowell and Hornsby state, "Proficient readersguage teacher is coach, model, and guide.
easily recognize most words and gain meanConcepts are to be discovered, not presented,
ing usually without even attending to all of
because discovery, according to the wholethe letters or even all of the words, because
language canon, promotes higher-order thinktheir ability to decode is largely automaticing. If the goal of the lesson is to have chiland subconscious."" Whole-language advodren read words with /o/ and notice all thecates believe that teachers who teach compoways the /o/ sound is spelled, the teacher
nent skills and who make reading a conscious
does not provide the list of the spellings forprocess may spoil the reading experience for/o/, examples of each, and planned practice tochildren.
ensure their recognition. Children are to conTeach phonics and spelling on an "asstruct their own knowledge of /o/. The chilneeded" basis, that is, after students makedren may be asked to search a text for all theerrors on words while they are reading andwords with the /o/ sound and then group
writing. Phonics is allowed into the wholethem according to their spellings (ow, oe, oa,
4Louisa Cook Moats14

ognize a word, the child should be asked toguess at the word from context and thensound the word out if guessing does not yielda word that would make sense in thesentence. On a third-grade teacher's wall, in aclassroom in Washington, DC, where I conduct a research project, is the following
poster:o, ough, and so forth). Although active
engagement is a principle of good teaching,
the discovery approach to language skills canbe imprecise and unnecessarily time consuming. It should not replace direct teaching ofconcepts.
It is unimportant to teach strategies forreading single words out of context.
According to whole-language doctrine, thepoint of reading is not to read individual
words; it is to understand connected text.
This truism has been translated into a prohibition against teaching or testing the child's
ability to read single words out of context.
Work on word recognition is minimized infavor of literature-related activities, even in
the beginning stages when children cannot
yet read. Accuracy in word reading is not valued for its own sake. Children's reading
errors (miscues) are accepted if the error isthe same part of speech as the misread wordor if it does not change the meaning of thepassage.'9 The teacher is directed away fromthe importance of accurate word reading outof context.
Good readers can recognize words on thebasis of a few sound-symbol correspondences, such as beginning and ending consonants, and don't really need to know the innerdetails, such as vowels. In whole language,
reading is viewed as a process of predicting
words on the basis of meaning and context.
The good reader samples the print, anddetailed decoding of all the sounds in words
is unnecessary. As a consequence, teaching
all the letter-sound correspondences, andteaching children the skills to sound out anentire word, is unnecessary. Thus, many socalled phonics activities in whole-language
classrooms emphasize the decoding of initialconsonants (and maybe end consonants) andword families (that is, the part of a syllable
composed of the vowel and all the consonants that follow it, such as -ild, -ank, orodge), but complete knowledge of the soundsymbol system is not emphasized.
When a child is reading and cannot rec-

If a word in a sentence is unfamiliar,
read to the end of the sentence. Skip theword you do not know. After reading thesentence, use the context to guess theword. If you still do not know the word,
do the following:Think about your letter sounds.
Think about word parts.

Try to say the word. (Does it makesense?)

If you still don't know the word, lookit up in the glossary or dictionary.
Ask someone for help.

Whole language dictates that recognitionof unknown words is a function of three"cueing systems."'" Semantic, syntactic, andgraphophonic processes are depicted as theenablers of functional reading, although thegraphophonic cueing system (an invention ofwhole language, not of cognitive psychology)
plays a minor, back-up role in whole-language models of reading. The sense of thepassage is supposed to drive word recognition. The graphophonic cueing system is tobe deployed as a strategy of last resort if context-based guessing has not yielded the correct word!' The problem with the model,
however, is that skilled readers do not rely on
context to read words. They recognize themout of context by their letter-sound correspondences.

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

15

5

A Typical Whole-Language Class"
A first- or second-grade classroom inwhich whole-language ideas predominate is
not the traditional class of bygone years. It
has clusters of desks, not rows; the space is
not arranged so that children focus on theteacher in front of the class. Learning centersand clusters of desks lend themselves to individualized, self-directed, and small-grouplearning. A classroom library corner has
many books of different genres and a comfortable place to read. Little use is made of
the chalkboard. Paper charts prevail. There isa prominent "word wall," on which high-frequency vocabulary is placed in alphabeticalorder. Words such as off, on, orange, open,
our and oil might all be placed under Oo.
The varying sounds of those letter correspondences are irrelevant to the presentation.
Children gather on the floor around theteacher's chair during reading instruction.
The teacher introduces a lesson with a"shared" reading; she previews a selection
with the youngsters by taking a "picture
walk" through the book's illustrations. She
introduces new vocabulary meanings needed
to understand the story, but there is little reference to word structure. The five to ten new
words on the vocabulary list are presented asif they should be recognized on sight, by theirappearance and context. Vocabulary words
are selected for their meanings, not for theirsound-symbol correspondences, so they are
not used to reinforce a lesson on sound-symbol decoding. The teacher reads the bookaloud as she follows the text with her finger.
She leads a discussion about the story, eliciting from children their prior knowledge ofthe content and their questions about the content. After the story, she teaches a phonics
mini-lesson on a family of words with similarspellings, by listing them and asking the children to read them aloud. The words are chosen because of their use in the text.
More readings of the text follow on subsequent days. By week's end, children may
have read the same text three or four times,
the first few by choral reading and patterning.
When children take turns reading, they areencouraged to refer to the sense of the text tofigure out unknown words. The teacher gives
cues such as, "what would make sense there,"
9/"look at the pictures," "it rhymes withor "look at the beginning sound," when achild is stuck. Assignments often involve
writing or illustrating a personal response to
the text in a reader-response journal. Spelling
instruction is given on those words that thechildren misspell, after they have been usedin writing. During instruction, the children
are asked to invent what they think the likely
spelling of a word might be (Have a go!)before the teacher gives them the correctspelling. There are no spelling lists orspelling workbooks. Children are expected tocollaborate as they work on reading and writing projects. This is a constructivist environment: knowledge and truth will be discovered
if teachers put children in the lead.

What's Wrong with Whole Language?
Almost every premise advanced by whole
language proponents about how reading islearned has been contradicted by scientificinvestigations. Almost every practice stemming from these premises has been less successful with groups of both normally developing and reading-disabled children than6

practices based on reading science. As
Michael Pressley, editor of Educational
Psychologist, has remarked, "At best, muchof whole-language thinking...is obsolete, andat worst, much of it never was well informed
about children and their intellectual develop-

ment...."Louisa Cook Moats16

ten symbol systems, and many of those writNot all consequences of whole-language
ing systems represent whole words, concepts
ideology have been detrimental; mistaken(morphemes), or syllables. Only some of thebeliefs about early reading acquisition havemost recently invented writing systems reprealso been associated with some worthwhile
sent individual speech sounds. Spoken lanideas and sensible strategies such as encourguage may be hard-wired in the human brain,
aging student self-assessment, using classic
but written language is an acquired skill thatchildren's literature, reading aloud daily,requires special, unnaturalorganizing collaborative
insights about the sounds ingroups, and involving parents
words. Most children mustand students in literacy homeAlmost every wholebe taught to read through awork." Most educators comlanguage
practicehas
rather protracted process inmonly hold such ideas. They
been less successfulwhich they are made aware
are not the core ideas onof sounds and the symbols
which whole language waswith groups of boththat represent them, and thenconstructed, however, andnormally
developing
learn to apply these skills
they are not the intellectual
automatically and attend toproperty of whole language.
and reading-disabledmeaning.
Whole-language beliefs aboutchildren than practices
The alphabetic principle
the psychology of basic readbasedonreading
is not learned simply froming instruction, and the pracexposure to print. Children
tices that have been based on
science.
can understand our alphabetthose beliefs, are misinic writing system if they haveformed in theory and ineffecacquired a more fundamental understanding
tive in application.
called phonological awareness. That is, in
The National Reading Panel's Teachingorder to read new words written with anChildren to Read reviews once more what isalphabetic system, children need to be able to
known about the psychology of reading andmap the symbols to the speech sounds thatreading instruction. It does not evaluate
whole language directly, but it does synthemake up spoken words. Children who lack
the required insights often are unable to readsize evidence on critical components ofor spell well, even if they are reasonably
teaching reading. It resonates with several
intelligent or acquainted with the information
other reputable reviews of research, including
in books. Phonological awareness is primarily
Marilyn Adams's Beginning to Read, Jack
responsible for the development of the ability
Fletcher and G. Reid Lyon's summary of theto sound words out. The ability to use phonNational Institute of Child Health and Human
ics and to sound words out, in turn, is primarDevelopment's studies of reading," andily responsible for the development of conCatherine Snow, M. Susan Burns, and Peg
text-free word-recognition ability. ContextGriffin's Preventing Reading Difficulties infree word-recognition ability, moreover, isYoung Children. The tenets and practices ofprimarily responsible for the development ofwhole language are contradicted by the folthe ability to read connected text and comprelowing facts:
hend it."
Learning to read is not natural." Large
numbers of children fail to learn to read with
Spoken language and written language
are very different, and mastery of eachfluency, accuracy, and comprehension.
requires unique skills and proficiencies.
Alphabetic writing systems are a late cultural
Many children who are challenged in learninvention for which we are not biologicallying written language are relatively proficient
specialized. Only some languages have writWhole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction 7

17

word reading in turn depends on both phonoin spoken language. Spoken language syslogical awareness and the development oftems are learned automatically, without conrapid associations of speech to print."
scious instruction, when children share experiences and language with caretakers. Spoken
Context is not the primary factor in word
language comprises deeply networked rules
recognition. Context is valuable for decipherfor sound production and sentence construcing the meanings and uses for unfamiliartion that are devised andwords once they have beenlearned by a community of
named or decoded. It also
language speakers. Written
helps to resolve ambiguities
Most children must be
languages, in contrast, aretaught to read through a that arise from reading words
arbitrary systems that use asuch as content, which canratherprotracted
provariety of symbols for words,
be a noun or predicate adjecconcepts, syllables, andtive (or verb). Words are reccess in which they aresounds. Written English, inognized, however, frommade aware of sounds
contrast to spoken English,
detailed perceptual data at
andsymbolsthat
repreuses a much wider vocabulary
the average rate of about fiveand more complex, formal
words per second. We seesent them, and thensyntax to convey meaning.
what is printed, every letter
learn to apply these
Reading and writing requireof it, and our minds recogmastery of a special language
skills automatically and nize letters, sounds, andwith a special skill thatword pieces simultaneously
attend to meaning.
exceeds our natural abilities."and interactively as we
The most important skill
search for meaning. Goodin the beginning stages of reading is the abilreaders are more aware of the details of lanity to read single words completely, accurateguage structure and more attentive to internally, and fluently. Most of the variability inaspects of words than poor readers. They arereading achievement at the end of first gradeless likely to use a guessing strategy. In fact,
is accounted for by children's ability toguessing from context leads to egregious
decode words out of context, using knowlerrors; only 10 to 25 percent of words areedge of phonic correspondences. The mostcorrectly guessed." Recognizing words suchcommon and fundamental characteristic ofas scarred and scared, content and context,
poor text reading is the inability to read sinand devoid and devout require precise lettergle words accurately and fluently. Skill inwise decoding skill.

The Consequences of Whole Language
for Teachers and Children
Between 1975 and 1995, an entire fieldrushed to embrace a set of unfounded ideas
and practices without any evidence that children would learn to read better, earlier, or ingreater numbers than they had with the basal
readers in use at the time!' Although wholelanguage believers shunned basal readers in

8

favor of reading programs created by individual teachers from children's books, publishers
swiftly jumped on the bandwagon to produce
whole-language materials for schools. The
California Language Arts Frameworks of1987 were especially influential in driving
publishers away from basic-skill instruction."

Louisa Cook Moats18

Basal programs were marketed and sold, but
now without emphasis (or even any lessons)on direct teaching of phonemic awareness,spelling, phonics, grammar, handwriting, orother language skills. Predictable or repetitive
text that children could memorize was preferred to stories that required children tosound words out based on what they had
been taught. Beyond classroom reading
instruction itself, however, whole language

has had far-reachingit is not too much tosay corruptingeffects:

teaching became love of reading, not the ability to read. The effects of whole-language
methods on student achievement were thus
impossible to determine.
Teachers were easily persuaded that thescience of behavioral measurement had little
to offer them. The schools of education did
not require their own students to understandconcepts such as behavioral sampling, correlation, prediction, reliability, validity, andnormative standards. Teachers were seldom
obliged to inform instruction with samples ofcritical component reading skills: phoneme
blending and segmentation, sound-symbol
association knowledge, decoding and spellingof regular spelling patterns, text-reading fluency, or vocabulary knowledge. Instead,teachers were and are taught to use forms ofreading assessment that have little reliability
or correspondence to research-validated outcome measures. The goal in whole language
is to measure the process ofreading, not the product ofRejection of reliable, valid measures ofachievement. In order to justify its love affair
with whole language in the face of little or noevidence for its positive results, the field of
reading education began to disavow scientificmethodology and objective measurement."
Between 1989, when Steven Stahl and P.D.
Miller conducted their first major review ofthe evidence, and 1994, when they updated
their analysis, twenty of
forty-five studies that purIn order to justify its
portedly evaluated the effecinstructiona difficult mistiveness of whole language
love affair with wholesion to accomplish evendeclined to use or report any
language in the face of when the reading process isstandardized measure of readwell conceived.
little or no evidence foring achievement. Instead of
Miscue analysis and "runacknowledging that objective
ning records" have been andits positive results, theassessments were proving
continue to be widely profield of reading educathem wrong, many readingmoted whole-language
tion began to disavow
education researchers rejected
tools." Even within the pastobjectivity itself. Those
scientific methodology year (1999), Connecticut wasinvested in defending whole
the value of runningand objective measure- teaching
language criticized traditional
records and miscue analysis
ment.
achievement tests as unauin state advisories on reading.
thentic and replaced them
A running record measureswith measures of motivation,
fluency and accuracy in oral
enjoyment, or self-esteem. Attitude, notreading of a "leveled" book (not a norm-refachievement, became the outcome of concern
erenced passage) and asks the teacher to clasin the reading education research community.
sify a child's errors according to which cueA positive attitude toward reading was
ing system produced each of them. Although
expected to lead children automatically intooral-passage reading rate and accuracy are
more and better reading. Many reading-edugood measures of overall reading ability
cation researchers replaced standardized, relibecause they measure word-recognition speed
able, validated assessments with alternative
and accuracy, the classification of "miscues"
assessments that probed attitudes. The goal ofis unreliable, invalid, and a waste of theWhole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

19

9

teacher's time." Practically speaking, one
teacher is not likely to classify the errors inthe same way as the next teacher, students are
not likely to have similar miscue patterns
from one day to the next, and the relationshipbetween miscue patterns, reading achievement levels, and response to reading instruction has never been demonstrated." Whenteachers are not able to measure valid constructs with reliable tools, they cannot use
classroom assessments to direct their teaching.

Error analysis has value when based on a
defensible understanding of reading andspelling processes. It is worthwhile if it helps
us determine what kind of problem a childhas, what kind of information that childneeds, and what kind of instructional activities are likely to work well. Miscues and running records do not meet these criteria.
Minimizing the importance of language
structure for teachers and students. In thewhole-language context, neither students nor
teachers need to know specific concepts
about the structure of spoken or written language. Speech sounds, syllables, spelling correspondences, sentence parts, grammaticalcategories, and cohesive devices are minimized together. If holism and contextual
learning are valued, then language parts
become unimportant. If students are to learn
reading and spelling through imprinting,modeling, and discovery, then teachers need
not know explicit linguistic analysis. If concepts can be taught minimally in minilessons, then they do not need to be definedwith precision, understood in relation to one
another, or taught methodically. Pre-determined sequences, selection of component
skills, and planned lessons in which skills are
systematically developed are unnecessary.
Teachers can get by knowing very little about
their language; their own knowledge gaps
will not be exposed during a whole-language
lesson.
Cursory treatment of linguistic concepts
continues to be applauded indescriptions of

10well-taught whole-language lessons. A recent
article in the IRA journal, The Reading
Teacher," describes an exemplary whole-language teacher at work. She is helping a childsound out the word happy." The teacher
informs the child that the sounds are /h/ /a//p/ /p/ /y/. This information, however, is inaccurate: the doubled letter in happy is aspelling convention. There is only one /p/sound in happy. The letter is doubled becauseof the juncture of two syllables, the first ofwhich has a short vowel. This student has
been misinformed by the teacher's explanation, but the teacher (and The Reading
Teacher's editors) remains in the dark as well.
The same teacher goes on to help anotherchild decode nose. She asks him what lettersthe word begins and ends with (n and e).
Then, the teacher asks the child what the letter e stands for, and the child says /e/. Next,
the teacher says that the e is silent and points
to the other vowel, o. She tells the child thatthe o will be long and will say its name.
Finally, she instructs the child to look at the
picture and guess what word starts with an n.
The child doesn't respond. The teacher says it
starts with /n/ and points to the picture; thechild finally gets nose. The aversion to directteaching of language, based on accurate
analyses of phonology and orthography, persists.

Knowing the speech sounds in apple or
happy and the syllable conventions that
underlie such spellings is uncommon among
recently trained reading teachers." Knowing
how to teach a language concept so that children are led systematically to grasp it is evenless common. These gaps in professional content knowledge adversely affect the children.
In interchanges such as those just cited, thestudents have been short-changed; the information provided to them is incomplete, inaccurate linguistically, and ineffectively taught.
The students' propensity to guess from partial
understanding is reinforced because they
have not been taught systematically how the
spelling patterns work or practiced the associ-Louisa Cook Moats20

ations so that they can be used successfully at
the next encounter. They have been encouraged to guess from context because they do
not have the skill to read the new words independently. Of greatest concern, the leading
journal for teachers of reading portrays such
instruction as exemplary because it minimizes the teaching of word analysis andfocuses the child on meaning.
Misunderstanding of the role of skills incompetent performance. A most unfortunate
legacy of whole language has been the denigration of skill building and skill instructionin the name of holism. The word skills has
been repeatedly associated with pejorative
terms such as boring, isolated, meaningless,and dreadful in whole-language rhetoric.
Skill building is never described as necessary,
engaging, satisfying, or enjoyable, or identified as the essential base on which expert performance is constructed. Out on this limb, thefield of reading education has rejected major
premises of cognitive psychology. John
Anderson, a cognitive psychologist at
Carnegie Mellon University who won anachievement award from the American
Psychological Association in 1995, commented in his acceptance address:
The theory [of knowledge acquisition] implies that acquiring competence is very much a labor-intensive business in which one must acquire one-byone all the knowledge components.
This flies very much in the face of current educational fashion, but...this educational fashion is having a very deleterious effect on education. We need torecognize and respect the effort that
goes into acquiring competence.4°
Competence, he explains, is more than thesum of its parts: it depends on deploymentof the right information for the right purpose at the right time. Having at one's disposal a large storehouse of organized anddefined information is prerequisite forcomplex applications of facts, concepts,
and skills!"
Equation of teacher empowerment withfreedom from structured curricula.
Professions are generally defined by theknowledge and skill that their members share.
The public interest depends on such definition and the ability of the professional community to regulate itself accordingly. Wholelanguage, however, promotes the ideas ofteacher independence and self-sufficiency.
Instead of encouraging the development or
dissemination of better instructional programs, or encouraging teachers to apply bestpractices validated by others, whole-language
educators encouraged teachers to invent theirown individual curricula and to rely primarilyon their own experience to make instructional
decisions. Even now, reading education professors in the U.S. continue to rail against
education policies that impose constraints ordirectives ("mandates") about curriculum or
methods, complaining that the loss of control
by classroom teachers over what they do intheir classes is a threat to both democracy andprofessionalism." In the climate perpetuatedby such rhetoric', teachers' incentives to collaborate, to replicate best practices, or to
study research are diminished.

Whole Language Persists
The stubborn persistence of unsupported
ideas and practices in reading education(indeed, all of education) puzzles and dismays many people outside the field. When afield continues to value philosophy over evidence that certain practices benefit children
more than others, we must ask why this is thecase.

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

21

11

graph in 1998 entitled Perspectives in
Ideology is valued over evidence. One
Reading Instruction. Rather than taking astraightforward explanation for the nonsensestand about which points of view werethat infects reading education must be a pergrounded in evidence and which were withvasive lack of rigor in academic educationout foundation, the ASCD published a diadepartments. In reading, anyone who publishtribe by Ken Goodman against National
es in any form is customarily referred to as a
Institutes of Health research and a marketing"researcher" in conference programs.
piece by Marie Carbo (a proponent of
Reading associations' "research symposia"
Learning Styles, another misinformed
routinely include speakers whose work bears
approach without scientific underpinnings)."
no relation to objective methods of inquiry.
These coexist in one slim volume with essays
Reading conferences most often attended by
by more credible writers, all prefaced withteachers are primarily marketing conventions
the comment that "multiple voices...must be
for publishers, trainers, and others with prodheard.'46 In October 1999, Educational
ucts and services to promote.
Leadership included an article entitled
Reading-research journals publish articles"Whole Language Works: Sixty Years ofthat defy any reasonable standard of acceptResearch," by three authors who caricatureable methodology. For example, a recent
code-emphasis instruction ("`Decodable text'
issue of The Reading Teacher (spring 2000)
is the new trend inincludes an article in whichreading""); make statements"researchers" visited eight
Unfortunately, lack ofthat contradict every authoripreselected whole-language
rigor
and
disrespectfortative research summary onclassrooms to document what
reading ("[C]ontemporary
the teachers were doing. Only
evidence in reading
research on early readingteachers who used methods
instruction are reinstrongly endorses a holistic
consistent with whole-lanforcedbythepassivity
approach""); and misrepreguage theory were included
sent the views of authors
in the study." The a prioriof education leaders
who are referenced, such asassumption communicated to
who feel that any idea
Carol Chomsky.49 The fieldreaders was that good teachthat can muster a vigor- would be better served byers are whole-language teacheditorial policies that result
ers. The number of citations
ous advocate is legitiin the reader's enlightenment,on reading screened by themate and deserves to be rather than policies that conNational Reading Paneltribute to the reader's confu(100,000) is many times largaired.
sion.
er than the few dozen studies
Whole-language incarnathat ultimately informed thetions, such as Reading Recovery, covertly
panel's conclusions." The number of scientifembody whole-language ideas. The success
ically credible studies of reading instruction
and persistence of Reading Recovery (RR)
is relatively small in comparison to the volexemplifies the power of ideology over eviume of work that is done.
dence. RR is an expensive, first grade, oneUnfortunately, lack of rigor and disrespect
on-one tutorial intervention approach that isfor evidence in reading education are reincompatible with whole-language ideas. It is
forced by the passivity of education leaders
promoted by a parent institute in Ohio that
who feel that any idea that can muster a vigwas founded to disseminate the ideas oforous advocate is legitimate and deserves toMarie Clay, a New Zealand educator. Within
be aired. The Association for Supervision anda structured lesson format, RR embraces
Curriculum Development published a mono-

12

Louisa Cook Moats22

many whole-language premises.5° The leadersof RR in the United States, Irene Fountas and
Gay Su Pinnell, are popular proponents of"guided reading" approaches and other classroom extensions of RR. In a 1999 newsletterfrom their institute, they describe a typicallesson, claiming that it is designed to build
the competencies endorsed by the National
Research Council's 1998 report on preventing
reading difficulties in young children.' In thesame piece, Fountas and Pinnell endorse running records, predictable texts, incidental
phonics instruction, teaching children to
guess at words from context and initial letter,the importance of cueing systems, and decoding by analogy. They argue that there should
be no predetermined sequence for decoding
instruction; decoding should be taught as students compose their own sentences and stories.
New Zealand Professor William Tunmer
and his colleagues have been carefully critical of RR for a decade, producing one study
after another that illuminates the flaws of theReading Recovery approach. Tunmer's groupmost recently conducted research commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of
Education and presented at the American
Educational Research Association." They
asked basic questions that have never beensystematically investigated by the promoters
who profit from the program: Who succeedswith RR? Who does not? Are there shortterm or long-term benefits? Will otherapproaches be more effective? Is the expense
justified? What happens to the students who
do not succeed?
Their findings, obtained under controlled
and well-designed conditions of scientificinvestigation, were consistent with previous
studies. Success in RR was a function of students' entering phonological abilities.
Participation in the program did not eliminate
or reduce phonological deficiencies. Students
with phonological difficulties did poorly. The
program did not produce accelerated reading
performance. One year later, the children's

reading was about one year below age-appropriate levels, even though they had progressed through the sequence of books usedin the RR program. Children who had not
progressed well showed declines in reading
self-concept after RR, more negative perceptions of their reading and spelling ability, andproblems with academic self-concept a year
later. They also had more classroom behavior
problems. In conjunction with previous studies, Tunmer's group concluded that RR may
be more effective if greater emphasis isplaced on development and use of word-levelskills and strategies involving phonologicalinformation. Tunmer has reported several
times that direct, systematic instruction insound-symbol decoding is more effective
than the incidental instruction used by RR. In
one study, the RR approach was 37 percent
less efficient than the direct, systematic
approach because letter-to-phoneme knowledge is primarily responsible for driving thedevelopment of word-recognition skills. "Have these reports caused RR's promoters or consumers to change their rationale,methodology, student-assessment practices,or requirements for teacher training?
Evidently not. Although individuals andtraining sites may differ, the official line from
RR leaders remains virtually the same as it
has been for two decades. The institute continues to teach a flawed conception of reading psychology and a methodology thatwould be significantly improved if it werealigned with the results of research.
Regrettably, this has not happened. The resistance to change is difficult to understand, but
it may simply reflect the expectation by RR
leaders that consumers will not care about the
research. So far, they have been right.
State standards and frameworks continue
to reflect whole-language ideas. States' academic standards commonly reflect prevailing
educational philosophies. Once established,
they change slowly. Meanwhile, they influence practice.
New Jersey's Language Arts Literacy

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

2°

13

language structure at several levels, and to
Curriculum Framework, passed in the fall ofread a broad sampling of worthwhile litera1998, is reminiscent of California's 1987
ture. The early literacy portion of the docuframework. In the entire document, there isment, however, includes a sample lesson thatno directive for the systematic instruction of
could be taken from a whole-language handsound-symbol decoding or knowledge ofbook." In this literature-focused lesson, there
other language structures. The reading objecis no instruction in sound-symbol relationtives address only comprehension and higherships beyond initial consonant decoding, nolevel text interpretation, with the exception of
instruction in left-to-right sound blending,"Use print concepts in developmentallyand no control over theappropriate ways." "sound-symbol patterns
Suggested activities to teachStates' academictaught. It is not explained
reading include pointing to
how the children should learn
text, reading it aloud, andstandards and frameto read other than guessing
establishing "one-to-one
works commonlyfrom context and an initialmatching." Cutting up thereflect prevailingconsonant. Commendable
words of the sentences andthough the Bay State's new
sequencing them is advised.
educational
language arts framework
Phonemic awareness is to bephilosophies,
including
generally is, issues in earlytaught by finding rhyming
whole-language ideas.
reading need clearer explicawords in a familiar text.
tion lest they sow confusion
Phoneme identity, spellingin the primary classroom.
correspondences, syllables,
Indiana is another state whose standards
and meaningful parts of words (morphemes)
are now admirable except for some specifics
are not to be the content of instruction at all,of early reading. The Hoosier State's revised
according to this document. Children in New
English Language-Arts Standards expect only
Jersey apparently are expected to read bythat kindergarten children will "recognize
imprinting and osmosis. Similar expectations
consonant sounds that are the same or differcharacterize the standards of Vermont, Ohio,
ent at the beginning of spoken words andand North Dakota, among others.
identify the consonants that make different
Even states with generally praiseworthysounds at the beginning of spoken words
standards for language arts can sometimes(Which word begins with the letter b? fish,
slip when it comes to essentials of early readball, cat.)." Indiana is to be commended foring instruction. Massachusetts' new stanaddressing the domain of phonological learndards, for example, are excellent for thirding, but sound blending, segmenting, and thegrade and up, as judged by several reviews
association of sounds with symbols should be
by Achieve, Inc. and the Thomas B. Fordham
included in their standards, too.
Foundation." Students are expected to know

What Next?
Advocates for education reform andimprovement may be surprised that we havenot slain the monster of misinformed reading
instruction. After all, a half dozen major consensus documents on the research evidence
about reading have been widely distributed,

14

digested, and converted into policy. Classroom practice and academic education, however, are not changing fast enough for us toclaim that evidence-based teaching will predominate in our schools at any time soon.
Whole language may have been dis-Louisa Cook Moats24

2. State assessments of reading and lanproven by scholars, but it still lurks in many
guage arts should be calibrated tocorners of education practice: in textbooks
show the effects of reading instruction
for teachers, instructional materials for classroom use, teacher-licensing requirements,
as delineated in well-written state
courses and standards for teacher education,
standards.
and the professional context in which teachers work. As a consequence, too many chil3. State accountability systems shoulddren are not doing as well as they could be,emphasize the attainment of gradeand others are falling by theappropriate reading, spelling,
wayside in beginning readand writing skills by third
Minority, low-income,ing, never to get on track,
grade, so that actions can beeven though this failure istaken quickly to (a) provide
immigrant, and innerlargely preventable. Not all
meaningful and effective
citychildrenarethechildren are adversely affectremediation to the students
pupils most likely to be who have fallen by the wayed, to be sure; many children
learn to read in spite of how
side; and (b) reorganize or
harmed by persistent
we teach them, and many
disband failing schools orwhole-language
teachers are teaching reading
provide parents with alternawell. Nevertheless, it is those
tive placements for their chilideology and its
children who depend thedren. To this end, the efforts
manifestations inmost on valid and effectiveof states such as Texas andpractice.
instruction in school, includVirginia to develop a valid
ing minority, low-income,screening tool for reading in
immigrant, and inner-city
grades K-2 are laudable.
children, who are most likely to be harmed
by persistent whole-language ideology and its
4. States should adopt rigorous licensing
manifestations in practice."
examinations for new teachers andConfronting and changing the legacy ofveteran teachers alike. States must bewhole language is a mission yet to be accomclear and specific in their delineationplished. Righting reading instruction calls forof research-based practice, so that litcontinuing effort on eight separate fronts.
tle incentive remains for the perpetuation of unsupported ideas such as
those of whole language. Knowledge
1. Every state should have language-arts
content standards and curricularof reading development, language
frameworks for each grade fromstructure, reading pedagogy, andassessments would seem minimallykindergarten through third grade.
These should be explicitly based onnecessary for effective, informed
research findings on phonemic awareinstruction. Licensing exams shouldness, alphabetic skills, reading fluenprobe actual mastery of specific comcy, beginning and advanced decoding
ponents of reading instruction.
skills, vocabulary, and comprehenClassroom practices at the school
sion. California and Texas have done
level should be based on best practiceespecially well in this regard andand be open to independent review byshould be emulatedbut even they
others who are knowledgeable about
need to ensure that practice follows
the issues.

policy.

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

25

15

show for whom their product works
and under what conditions.

5. Because state university reading

departments have been the slowest tochange and the most tenaciously loyal
to whole-language ideology, alternative teacher-preparation programs
should be encouraged and supported.
If disillusioned consumers are able tolook elsewhere for teachers who canpass a licensing exam and demonstrate their competence with students,
entrenched academic departments
may feel more pressure to improve.
6. Traditional schools and programs ofeducation should be organized differently. Professional preparation ofeffective teachers should be theirfocus. Faculty tenure would be abolished. Faculty would maintain positions if they could successfully collaborate with a team in the preparation ofcompetent teachers. Professional
schools for teaching would be partners with departments of core disciplines including linguistics and psychology. Faculty members would be
eligible for their role if they themselves had been successful practitioners in K-12 classrooms.
7. State-guided textbook adoptions

should be regulated according to thealignment of the material withresearch evidence for what works
best. Publishers should be required to

16

8.

Journalists and policymakers need tountie the string and closely examine
the innards of instructional programs
and packages that are offered in thename of "balanced" reading.

What children bring to the printed page,
and to the task of writing, is knowledge of
spoken language. What must be learned isknowledge of the written symbols that represent speech, and the ability to use those productively. Knowing the difference between
sacks and sax, past and passed, or their andthere, or knowing that antique says "anteek,"requires language awareness and attention todetail. Students who are not taught properly
are less able to sound out a new word when it
is encountered, slower and less accurate atreading whole words, less able to spell, lessable to interpret punctuation and sentence
meaning, and less able to learn new vocabulary words from reading them in context.
Students deserve to have sufficient understanding of the language they speak, read,
and write so that they can use it to communicate well. Ironically, whole language has
stood in the way of this accomplishment for
many years. Today, its influence is still withus. If sufficient attention is promptly given tochanges such as those outlined above, tomorrow may yet be a different story.

Louisa Cook Moats

26

Notes' See Marilyn J. Adams, "The Progress of the Whole-Language Debate," Educational Psychologist
29, no. 4 (1994): 217-222; and Michael Pressley, "State of the Science Primary-Grades Reading
Instruction or Whole Language?" Educational Psychologist 29, no. 4 (1994): 211-215.
2 See Learning First Alliance, "Every Child Reading," American Educator 22, no. 1-2 (1998): 61.
See National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the
Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction(Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000): 9-11.

See Penny A. Freppon and Karin L. Dahl, "Balanced Instruction: Insights and Considerations,"
Reading Research Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1998): 240-251.
See Ellen McIntyre and Michael Pressley, eds., Balanced Instruction: Strategies and Skills in
Whole Language (Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon, 1996).
6 The National Reading Panel's report Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessmentof the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction,issued in April of 2000, provides a credible screening, analysis, and interpretation of the highest
quality research on reading interventions.

' See Marilyn Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1990); Michael Pressley, Reading Instruction that Works: The Case for Balanced
Teaching (New York: Guilford Press, 1998); and Catherine E. Snow, M. Susan Burns, and Peg
Griffin, eds., Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Washington, DC: National
Academy Press, 1998).
8 See Steven A. Stahl and P.D. Miller, "Whole Language and Language Experience Approaches for
Beginning Reading: A Quantitative Research Synthesis," Review of Educational Research 59, no.1
(1989): 87-116.
9 See Karin L. Dahl and Patricia L. Scharer, "Phonics Teaching and Learning in Whole Language
Classrooms: New Evidence from Research," The Reading Teacher 53 (2000): 584-594; Harvey
Daniels, Steve Zemelman, and Marilyn Bizar, "Whole Language Works: Sixty Years of Research,"
Educational Leadership 57, no. 2 (2000): 32-37; Kenneth S. Goodman, Phonics Phacts(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1993); Kenneth S. Goodman, What's Whole in Whole Language?
(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986); Margaret Moustafa, Beyond Traditional Phonics(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997); and Constance Weaver, "On Research and the Teaching ofPhonics," in Creating Support for Effective Literacy Education, ed. Constance Weaver, Lorraine
Fillmeister-Krause, and Grace Vento-Zogby (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996), xv-xvii.
1° Kenneth S. Goodman, "Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game," Journal of the Reading
Specialist 6 (1967): 126-135; and Frank Smith, "Making Sense of ReadingAnd of Reading

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

27

17

Instruction," Harvard Educational Review 47 (1977): 386-395.
" Frank Smith, Understanding Reading: A Psycho linguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning toRead, 2d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978).
12 A basal reader is a classroom reading textbook. It usually includes stories of graded difficulty,
some control over the vocabulary that is introduced, and supportive lessons in various skills necessary for learning to read. Classrooms often have the same text for every student, even though students are grouped according to their reading levels for smaller group instruction.
13 See Daniels, Zemelman, and Bizar, "Whole Language Works"; and Debbie Powell and David
Hornsby, Learning Phonics and Spelling in a Whole Language Classroom (New York: Scholastic
Professional Books, 1993).
14 Idaho public television in April 2000 aired a program for kindergarten teachers that demonstrated
this technique.

'Powell and Hornsby, Learning Phonics and Spelling, 23.
16 Ibid., 43.
" 7 Ibid., 21.

18 The "mini-lesson" approach is pervasive in the products of major classroom basal reading programs.

See Kerry Hempenstall, "Miscue Analysis: A Critique," Effective School Practices 17, no. 3(1999): 87-93.
20 Marilyn J. Adams, "The Three-Cueing System," in Literacy for All: Issues in Teaching and
Learning, ed. Jean Osborn and Fran Lehr (New York: Guilford Press, 1998): 73-99.
21 In the California Reading Language Arts Framework, which was written under Bill Honig's term
as state superintendent of public instruction in 1987, and which was in effect until 1997, teachers
were advised to cover up parts of words that children misread in order to encourage guessing fromcontext. Sounding out was characterized as the strategy of last resort.
22 A whole-language lesson and contrasting methods are portrayed in Snow, Burns, and Griffin,
Preventing Reading Difficulties, 200-203.
23 Pressley, "State-of-the-Science," 213.

24 See Daniels, Zemelman, and Bizar, "Whole Language Works," 32-37.

25 Jack M. Fletcher and G. Reid Lyon, "Reading: A Research-Based Approach," in What's Gone
Wrong in America's Classrooms?, ed. Williamson M. Evers (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution
Press, 1998), 40-90.

18Louisa Cook Moats28

" See Alvin M. Liberman, "The Reading Researcher and the Reading Teacher Need the Right
Theory of Speech," Scientific Studies of Reading 3 (1999): 95-111.
27 See Linnea Ehri, "Phases of Development in Learning to Read Words by Sight," Journal of
Research in Reading 18, no. 2 (1995): 116-125; Tom Nicholson, "Do Children Read Words Betterin Context or in Lists? A Classic Study Revisited," Journal of Educational Psychology 83, no. 4(1991) 444-450; and William E. Tunmer and Wesley A. Hoover, "Phonological Decoding Skill and
Beginning Reading," Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5 (1993): 161-179.
28 See Liberman, "The Reading Researcher."

29 See Fletcher and Lyon, "Reading: A Research-Based Approach."

3° See Phil Gough, "The Beginning of Decoding," Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary
Journal 5 (1993): 181-192.

3' See Steven Stahl, M.C. McKenna, and J.R. Pagnucco, "The Effects of Whole Language
Instruction: An Update and Reappraisal," Educational Psychologist 29, no. 4 (1994): 175-185; andSteven Stahl and P.D. Miller, "Whole Language and Language Experience Approaches."
32 Bill Honig, who was superintendent of public instruction in California at the time, has sinceacknowledged the errors of this document, disavowed the philosophy on which it was based, andextensively revised his position on early reading instruction.
" E.D. Hirsch, in The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them (New York: Doubleday, 1996),
p. 176, calls this "shooting the messenger" in his chapter on test evasion.

" See Marie M. Clay, The Early Detection of Reading Difficulties: A Diagnostic Survey andReading Recovery Procedures (Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books, 1985); and Kenneth S.
Goodman, Miscue Analysis: Applications to Reading Instruction (Urbana, IL: National Council of
Teachers of English, 1973).

" See Hempenstall, "Miscue Analysis," 87-93.
36 See James W. Chapman, William E. Tunmer, and Jane E. Prochnow, Success in Reading
Recovery Depends on the Development of Phonological Processing Skills, report to the Ministry of
Education of New Zealand, August 1999 (revised research report for phase three of contract
ER35/299/5; presented to the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, April,
1998).

" Dahl and Scharer, "Phonics Teaching and Learning," 588.
38 For many years, The Reading Teacher contained almost no articles with any positive referencetophonics, vocabulary, or word analysis; at least the topic is once again permissible, but it is limited
to discussion of the exemplary whole-language classroom.

" See Louisa C. Moats, "The Missing Foundation in Teacher Education," American Educator 19,
Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction

29

19

no. 9 (1995): 43-51.
4° John R. Anderson, "ACT: A Simple Theory of Complex Cognition," American Psychologist 51,
no. 4 (1996): 359.
41 Ibid., 355-365.

42 See James Hoffman, "The De-democratization of Schools and Literacy in America," The Reading
Teacher 53 (2000): 616-623; and Cathy Roller, "The International Reading Association Responds
to a Highly Charged Policy Environment," The Reading Teacher 53 (2000): 626-636. Hoffman
decries the efforts of policymakers to "control" reading education because "mandates" about reading education threaten democracy by taking power away from classroom teachers.

u Dahl and Scharer, "Phonics Teaching and Learning," 584-94.

" See National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read, 1, 7, 9, 12, 13.
45 For a critique of Marie Carbo's "learning styles" theory, see Steven Stahl, "Different Strokes forDifferent Folks? A Critique of Learning Styles," American Educator 23, no. 3 (1999): 27-31.

" Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Perspectives on Reading Instruction(Alexandria,VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998).
47 Harvey Daniels, Steve Zeinelman, and Marilyn Bizar, "Whole Language Works: Sixty Years of
Research, Educational Leadership 57, no. 2 (2000): 32.
48 Ibid., 36.

49 Ibid., 35-36.

" See Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, "How and Why Children Learn About Sounds, Letters,
and Words in Reading Recovery Lessons," The Running Record: A Review of Theory and Practicefor Reading Recovery Teachers 12, no. 1 (1999): 1-14.
51 Ibid.

52 See Chapman, Tunmer, and Prochnow, "Success in Reading Recovery."" William E. Tunmer and W.A. Hoover, "Phonological Skill and Beginning Reading."
54 New Jersey State Department of Education, New Jersey Language Arts Literacy Curriculum
Framework (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Department of Education, 1998), 254.
55 Lynn Olson, "Rating the Standards," Education Week 18, no. 17 (1999): 107-09. See also Chester
E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petri lli, eds., The State of State Standards 2000 (Washington, DC: The
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 2000), 68; and Sandra Stotsky, State English Standards: An
Appraisal of English Language-Arts/Reading Standards in 28 States (Complete Edition)(Washington, DC: The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1997), 19, 88-90.
20

Louisa Cook Moats

30

56 Massachusetts Department of Education, Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum
Framework (Boston: Massachusetts Department of Education, 1997), 17.

"Barbara R. Foorman, David J. Francis, /Jack M. Fletcher, Chris Schatschneider, and P. Mehta,"The Role Of Instruction in Learning to Read: Preventing Reading Failure in At-Risk Children,"
Journal of Educational Psychology 90 (1998): 1-15.

Whole Language Lives On: The Illusion of "Balanced" Reading Instruction 21

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