Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. What should a reading curriculum for youngest students actually do? On this day off in New York City schools, let's talk now about a system that the New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks says is not working, one, he isn't alone in criticizing. Across the elementary schools in the city, the most popular reading curriculum, as recently as 2019, was one developed by Lucy Calkins, a well-known professor at Columbia University Teachers Colleges. That system encouraged independent reading, and drawing on context to identify words.

What the system did not encourage was what's known as phonics, sounding letters out. Only half of New York City students in Grades 3 through 8 are proficient in reading, according to the standardized tests, and educators have lauded phonics for getting children up to speed for years. Now, the city's Department of Ed is mandating that every school adopt at least a supplemental phonics program.

A new report from Chalkbeat, the non-profit education news organization, and The City, the non-profit general local news organization, gets into all of this with the headline, "Hundreds of NYC Elementary Schools Used a Teachers College Reading Curriculum Banks Said ‘Has Not Worked’." With us now, Alex Zimmerman, reporter at Chalkbeat New York, and Yoav Gonen, reporter at The City. Hi, Alex. Hi, Yoav. Thanks for joining us today.

Alex Zimmerman: Thanks so much for having us.

Yoav Gonen: Pleasure to be here, thanks.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, remind us first a little bit about the Lucy Calkins Teachers College Reading curriculum was supposed to be and how it came about.

Alex Zimmerman: The basic idea behind Lucy Calkins' curriculum is that students should develop a love of reading. To foster that love of reading, students should do a lot of reading, and they should do it independently. A classic lesson involves a short mini-lesson of about 10 minutes, and then sending students off to pick books of their own choosing, at their own reading level, to read independently. The idea is that students can learn how to read by absorbing it, and reading independently, and that students will love to read by doing that and--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, sorry. Finish.

Alex Zimmerman: That approach has just been embedded in the city's school system for decades at this point. It's something that was really pushed during the Bloomberg administration, but has enjoyed support in recent administrations, too.

Brian Lehrer: In what ways did it succeed, and in what ways did it fail to get young students up to speed in reading? What does the data say?

Alex Zimmerman: You pointed to some of the system-wide state test score data, which suggests that about half of students in Grade 3 through 8 are reading proficiently. I think there are a number of students who do successfully learn how to read through this approach, but as you noted earlier, there is a growing chorus of literacy experts and academics who have pointed out that this curriculum doesn't include enough systematic instruction on the relationship between sounds and letters, which is what phonics is all about.

They point out that reading isn't really a natural skill. It's not something that students can really pick up without a lot of that direct instruction. A lot of the critics of this approach will point out that there are a large number of students, particularly low-income students, or students with disabilities, or students with other learning challenges, who will struggle to learn how to read through this approach.

Brian Lehrer: Before I bring in Yoav, one more question for you since you're the full-time education reporter with Chalkbeat, is there a socioeconomic difference story to tell here? Because some data in your story says roughly half of students in Grade 3 through 8 are proficient in reading, only half according to state tests as you've just cited, but there are large gaps between racial groups. More than two-thirds of white and Asian students are considered proficient, but fewer than 37% of Black and Latino children are.

Was the Lucy Calkins approach intended to help students from lower socio-economic groups, racial minorities, and did it succeed or fail differently with those groups?

Alex Zimmerman: That's a really good question. The data we have suggests that a large range of schools are using Lucy Calkins' curriculum. It's not just schools with lots of middle-class students, or lots of white and Asian students. It's also schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, with lots of Black students, or lots of Hispanic students. We're seeing just a fairly large penetration of this curriculum. I think if you talk to supporters of this approach, they would tell you that they believe that this is an approach that should work for a large range of kids.

I think even the harshest critics of the approach acknowledge that there is a substantial number of students who are able to learn to read through this approach, that it's not as if no student could learn how to read by using this curriculum, a lot really have. I think the point you're raising is a good one, we've talked to a lot of parents who also make the case that in wealthier neighborhoods, parents are able to fill the gaps by hiring private tutors, and getting more systematic instruction of their own. That obviously raises a whole bunch of equity issues.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, parents, and teachers, and yes, we're doing this on purpose on this week off from school in New York City, even though the story's been out for a little while. Help Yoav and Alex report this story. 212-433-WNYC. Teachers, especially teachers in the lower grades, what, as you see it, are the advantages of phonics, or the Lucy Calkins reading curriculum approach? If you work in a school making the shift to a phonics-based education right now, based on the new directive from the Department of Education, how is that going? You can throw that in, too.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. New York City lower-grade teachers, you are invited. 212-433-WNYC, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Yoav, for you, as more of the political reporter on the team, were these shortcomings known, or controversial at the city's Department of Education before Mayor Adams and David Banks?

Yoav Gonen: Well, I'll say one thing that's a little bit surprising is that the central DOE, as far as we know, never bothered to survey the schools to see what curriculum they were using to teach reading instruction. I think there's a few reasons for that. The Bloomberg administration, and under School's Chancellor Joel Klein, they seem to be a very outcome-oriented administration. They weren't as interested in how you got there, but they just wanted to see-- they largely judged schools based on test scores. They didn't seem to have as much interest in looking under the hood.

As far as we know, the first survey of this information was done in 2019 under de Blasio, but they didn't announce it publicly, and they sure gave us a hard time in providing it under a public disclosure. It took almost three years to get it. That hesitancy, or I should say that reluctance to identify what curriculum schools are using, I find a little bit perplexing, but I think part of their reluctance is if you diagnose a problem in the way the schools are teaching kids to read, the central bureaucracy going to be more responsible for coming up with solutions.

In a system as big as New York City schools, those solutions inevitably are going to be really, really expensive. We found that this curriculum was being used at nearly half of the 600 schools that were surveyed, most of them using this curriculum alone. If you decide that this curriculum doesn't work, then the next move, if you're going to address it, is potentially retraining thousands of teachers on a new way of teaching reading. That's going to be extremely expensive. I do think that's part of the reason why it was so difficult to get this data.

Brian Lehrer: How much is training an issue here then? Teachers have to be trained to teach reading through phonics as for the Calkins method, but aren't typically trained in both? Is that the starting point at the beginning of this school year?

Yoav Gonen: Well, there's a lot of criticism actually about what teachers are taught as far as how to teach reading when they go through their colleges when they get their master's degrees. A lot of the teaching colleges in New York and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon has highlighted this issue a lot, they don't spend very much time teaching teachers how to teach reading. She's introduced a bill that would mandate that teachers get a portion of their literacy credits in learning how to teach phonics because it's not mandated right now. From what the advocates say, it's just not very widespread in a lot of those institutions.

Brian Lehrer: That's weird. Alex, can you weigh in on that? Teachers who go through teacher training, education bachelor's degrees, aren't given a lot of instruction in how to teach reading. You would think that's one of the most important most basic things.

Alex Zimmerman: Yes. I think if you talk to a lot of teachers who have gone through local teaching colleges, including Teachers Colleges, but also others in the region, a lot will tell you that even the instruction they do get on how to teach reading is oriented around balanced literacy, which is the loosely defined name of the reading instruction that's happening through Lucy Calkins' curriculum. I think that points to one of the big systemic challenges here, which is that if you want to shift the emphasis in a classroom-by-classroom way, it is going to require a pretty big lift.

For the city's credit, they are asking schools to make this shift toward phonics. I think that a lot still remains to be seen about exactly how that's going to be implemented, what the accountability mechanisms are at a classroom-by-classroom level of how is the city making sure that teachers are actually adapting these phonics programs that the city is telling schools they have to use, but also beyond that, how are they making sure that it's being done with fidelity and that teachers feel like they have the support and resources they need to pull it off?

Brian Lehrer: We have some very interesting-looking teacher calls coming in. Let's start with Betty in Manhattan. Betty, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Betty: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good, thank you.

Betty: Okay. I actually taught for 10 years in Pre-K and kindergarten. I just want it to go on because I was listening as I was driving, so I pulled over safely and then called in. In my experience, when I started teaching in Pre-K, we had a lot of thematic units, we had a lot of meaningful exposure to letters and corresponding letter sounds and building vocabulary and building understanding about reading picture walks, things that the children could connect to in an actual natural way.

Then when I shifted to the DOE Lucy Calkins' curriculum, and yes, balanced literacy was a big deal when I was studying and got my bachelor's and got my master's, but it was the push for Lucy, it was almost like follow this Bible, follow this guide. It was pushed on us by the administration, but I knew it wasn't natural for our kids. In my kindergarten class, I still started by using thematic units and using the exposure to letters and letter sounds, and phonics.

Now, I've been a school psychologist for eight years, and I work in the middle school, and I see the results, and I see what happened with that generation who was taught that way. It's tragic. It's almost-- I was talking to one of my colleagues about this, and we almost feel that guilt for not pushing back harder for more phonics. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Having been through what you've been through, the way you described it, what was your sense of what they were after pushing the Lucy Calkins reading approach? Was it that they saw a disparity that already existed along racial lines, along income lines, whatever socio-economic lines you want to draw, that they thought could be addressed by using Lucy Calkins's approach that would get kids to love reading more, and then the rest would come? What do you think they were after?

Betty: I think you hit it right on the head. They wanted us to have a room filled with books, emergent reading. That was a big deal for kindergarten, emergent reading. Have them listen to all the stories, have them repeat the stories, have them share with their friends, have them sit with a partner, small groups, guided groups.

I taught in an affluent area, I don't want to specify where, but I did and the parents did have to fill in the gaps, but I also had my small guided groups, which my school told us aside, "You can still do your guided groups, you can still have your leveled libraries, you can still start with pattern books," which is a natural way, which is actually the way that children see books and start to learn the pattern and books. More than that, they gave us permission to do Handwriting Without Tears. They gave us permission to actually teach a letter a week.

It started out slow, but we were in an affluent neighborhood where the parents supplied us with more materials.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Betty, thank you for your call. I appreciate your story. Lorna, in Massapequa, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lorna.

Lorna: Hi, Brian, thank you for taking my call. I love this conversation. My comment was my son received the Hooked on Phonics package from the television. My sister got it for him for his second birthday. We did that package to the letter and he could read very well by the time he was three. He was a car seat kid. In the back, we had little tapes going. That's how long ago this was. For tape to play, he would flip the letters over, he would follow the sound, and make the sound that they made. Then they have little books in there and he re-read the little book at home.

Then I could see as we were driving down the street, him trying to figure out the words that were on the billboards, the stop signs, do not enter. It worked like a charm like that. It was great.

Brian Lehrer: One for phonics. I guess a lot of you are seeing those Hooked on Phonics commercials on TV, and that was for a program outside of the classroom. Thank you, Lorna. Jim, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Hey, Brian, how are you? I'm an eighth-grade middle school teacher. I've been doing it for 25 years. All of it in the South Bronx, in some pretty stressed neighborhoods with some pretty stressed populations. They walked into my room last week and dropped the package of workbooks for students and said, "You're teaching phonics now?" What's pretty amazing about it is they're judging this based on this program called i-Ready, another expensive program that I believe the city paid for, which is a thing online the kids go on to this program.

What it does is they read passages and answer questions, and it gives them a diagnostic a level, a reading level. Unfortunately, the kids don't take that very seriously when they do the diagnostic tests, which is supposed to tell them what grade level they're on. They know that the test doesn't count towards whether they're going to get out of eighth grade and go to high school. They don't take it seriously. I'm literally now teaching. I just did my first phonics class, I have 12 kids.

I know eight of them there were from classes that I've already taught. These kids all have excellent vocabularies because I've been stressing vocabulary. I'm literally teaching them how to sound out the word cat. The biggest waste of my time and their time, and none of us can keep a straight face. It's going to be very interesting to see how this works out, especially for upper grades where the kids are already pretty well-cooked.

I can see maybe it's going to be helpful for the lower grades because, as a middle school teacher, we've constantly just inherited kids that were four or five, six grades behind their reading levels, and trying the Lucy Calkins, everybody's going to learn holistically. I'm so cynical at this point, it's either Calkins or Charlotte Danielson, and the next big thing will come down the road and somebody will get rich, and it'll be abandoned in five, four years. Sorry for being so sinister.

Brian Lehrer: Well, what do you think and based on your experience about the success or failure of the Lucy Calkins' curriculum, and maybe a contrast with what you just described, teaching eighth graders to sound out cat, when they already know how it was.

I think they would show this may oversimplify, but they would show a picture of a cat to the younger students, and the whole word cat, and rather than teaching the C sound, and the A sound, and the T sound, they would hope that the kids would incorporate it by seeing the whole word C-A-T and a picture of the cat and I think that's what the chancellor is saying has failed. Is that your observation, too?

Jim: Well, having never taught really the younger grades, I can't say so much about that, but I do think that per method, the thing that we've been using with the Calkins method works for a lot of kids. Like you said earlier, kids that come into the classroom are already at a decent reading comprehension level are that the system's going to work for them, but you do, unfortunately, especially, I think, in poorer neighborhoods and in poorer schools, you have a real wide range in a classroom of some kids that are incredibly behind and kids that are very well at the right place.

Brian Lehrer: One of the follow-up for you because you may have given us a little bit of a lead for a news tip here. I don't know, but when you say the kids who can read don't take this test very seriously in eighth grade because they know it's not going to affect whether they get into high school, do you think that these low reading scores for the standardized tests in eighth grade, that is the relatively low percentage of students in eighth grade who are reading at grade level, do you think it's really more than that because the kids taking the tests don't take the test seriously?

Jim: Well, there's two things we're talking about here. One is this diagnostic program, which is not the state test that we go and see-

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I see.

Jim: -to be the supposedly the big decider.

Brian Lehrer: I see.

Jim: This diagnostic program [unintelligible 00:21:10] [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Because that is a high-stakes test. I see. It's a supplemental test and that's the one they don't take seriously. Jim, I appreciate all you put on the table. Reporters, I heard you reacting there during Jim's call. Who is that? What do you want to add?

Alex Zimmerman: One thing I would add is that it's really complicated to change approaches to teaching literacy. One thing I've just heard from a number of schools that have used Lucy Calkins' curriculum in the past is that there are elements of it that they really do appreciate. There is a focus on loving literature and there is just a focus on building students as intellectuals. I think a lot of teachers are really committed to the intensive training that they get from Teachers College. I also just want to make the point that phonics is important, but it is also not the only thing that goes into knowing how to read.

Students also need strong vocabularies, they need strong background in the content that they're reading about. I just think it's making a shift toward more phonics may very well turn out to be a good idea, but that the ingredients that make a reading program good are actually complicated and will require some shifts from schools. I think the big question is how much is the education department going to do to really help schools make those kinds of bigger-picture transitions.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, last question, and then we're out of time to the premise of your article that hundreds of elementary schools in the city are still using the Teachers College reading curriculum, even though officially, they're supposed to be switching to the phonics approach. Is it because they're defying it or they're not being changed or it's a big ship to turn around the New York City school system? Why is it being slower than poof, they're all teaching phonics now?

Alex Zimmerman: I think one key point is that the city has actually not mandated that schools abandon the Teachers College Lucy Calkins' curriculum. They're only required to at least have a phonics program, which schools can do for 20, 30 minutes a day, but that's in addition to their court reading program. I think a broader question is, is it enough to devote some time every day to phonics if what's happening during the rest of the reading instruction is not as systematic or not as focused?

The Teachers Colleges just credit Lucy Calkins credit, she has acknowledged that more of that phonics work is needed and has issued some updates to the curriculum. We weren't able to get any data on how many schools have actually purchased the updated materials. I think there's still some questions around that. I think curriculum is a notoriously slow thing to change. It is not something that's really possible to shift in a short timeframe.

Brian Lehrer: Alex Zimmerman, reporter of Chalkbeat New York; Yoav Gonen, reporter at the news organization, The City. Thanks for your joint reporting on this and your joint appearance on the show.

Alex Zimmerman: Thanks so much.

Yoav Gonen: Thanks for having us.

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