Readers, Instruction, and the NRP

Are programs that emphasize systematic phonics instruction truly superior to other types of programs for young readers, as the National Reading Panel claims? The authors conducted a study of three different programs to see what kinds of readers are actually emerging from them. JESSICA, a second-grader in an urban school with a low socioeconomic profile, reads: "But the nighttime tried to stand back down the stairs. So I caused it."1 Like her classmates, Jessica has learned to read words through systematic and explicit phonics instruction. She comes up with words that look and sound similar to the words on the page, but they do not always make sense in the sentence. She accepts this, seemingly unaware that the text is supposed to make sense. Jessica's repertoire of reading strategies is limited, and her comprehension is poor. Is this the kind of reading that we wish to promote? The pressure on schools to use programs of systematic and explicit phonics instruction is tremendous. The report of the National Reading Panel (NRP), a keystone resource for the Reading First program of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, used 38 studies to determine that explicit and systematic phonics instruction in the early grades is necessary.2 Though it is not clear how long lessons should run, how many letter/sound relationships should be learned, how much phonics should be covered, or the type of instruction needed, phonics is deemed necessary. The federal government severely restricts the range of reading programs that it will fund through NCLB to those that demonstrate a systematic and predominant emphasis on phonics. Only programs that are considered to be research-based, using a narrow medical model, are acceptable. Those who use other kinds of instruction that are based on other kinds of research risk forgoing federal funds. A case in point is New York City's run-in with federal agencies in which the phonics program the city tested in its schools was not considered "research-based."3 In order to ensure funding, school districts are adopting or mandating single commercial programs, such as Direct Instruction or Open Court, which, at the core of instruction, impose extensive systematic and explicit skill approaches on all children. Studying Readers Much of the research used by the NRP and approved by NCLB measures reading achievement by means of word lists, short passages with blanks, and lists of non-words. Such research does not study the actual process of students reading "real" texts, which would make it possible to determine the impact of phonics instruction on the strategies young readers use, on how they comprehend, or on how they perceive the reading process. We developed a study to do just that. We examined the impact of three different reading programs used in our metropolitan area on the reading processes of second-graders who had been instructed with these programs since at least first grade. Two were commercial programs that used explicit and systematic phonics instruction as a central piece in early reading learning: Direct Instruction (DI)4 and Open Court (OC).5 The third was a literature-based program, labeled Guided Reading (GR), wherein students were taught to use multiple strategies to focus on the meaning of what they read. This program was an adaptation of work by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell.6 The 84 students in our study live in urban settings and are of low socioeconomic status, but they are not coded for special education or for receiving ESL (English as a Second Language) services. To study the reading processes of these students, we asked the second-graders to read books to us aloud. We studied their reading using "miscue analysis," an established research tool that analyzes oral reading "miscues" or divergences from the text to reveal a reader's use of phonics cues, language structure cues, and meaning-based cues.7 Thus we learned about the students' reading strategies, as well as their skill in comprehending as they read. …