Speaker 1: I'm Manny, I'm Noah.
Speaker 2: This is Devin and this is no such thing.
Speaker 3: The show where we settle art, arguments and yours by
Speaker 3: actually doing the research. In this episode, kids aren't reading anymore.
Speaker 3: Who cares, No, There's no no such thing, no such thing,
Speaker 3: no such thank.
Speaker 4: Such, thank.
Speaker 5: Such thank.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 3: As we know, there have been many stories reports about
Speaker 3: the death of reading.
Speaker 7: The latest version of the Nation's report Card shows America's
Speaker 7: high school seniors have the worst math and reading scores
Speaker 7: in more than two decades.
Speaker 2: Just forty percent of fourth graders are working below what's
Speaker 2: considered a basic reading level for their age.
Speaker 6: Nearly a third of seniors did not have the basic
Speaker 6: reading skills needed to find the details in a given
Speaker 6: text to understand its meaning.
Speaker 7: Our nation's report card is a business right now.
Speaker 3: So one that I'll highlight for now is from the
Speaker 3: Atlantic magazine titled America is sliding toward illiteracy. So this
Speaker 3: is a quote from the article. By some measures, American
Speaker 3: students have regressed to a level not seen in twenty
Speaker 3: five years or more. Test scores from NAEP, short for
Speaker 3: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, show that thirty three
Speaker 3: percent of eighth graders are reading at a level that
Speaker 3: is below basic, meaning that they struggle to follow the
Speaker 3: order of events in a passage or to even summarize
Speaker 3: its main idea. That is the highest share of students
Speaker 3: unable to meaningfully read since nineteen ninety two. Among fourth graders,
Speaker 3: forty percent are below basic in reading, the highest share
Speaker 3: since two thousand. The bottom tenth of thirteen year olds,
Speaker 3: according to naep's long term trend data, are hitting lows
Speaker 3: in reading and math scores not seen since those tests
Speaker 3: began in nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy eight, respectively.
Speaker 3: They go through a bunch of different theories of why
Speaker 3: is it school spending is lower? No, school spending has
Speaker 3: increased from twenty twelve to twenty twenty two, from fourteen
Speaker 3: thousand per student to sixteen thousand adjusted for inflation. Okay,
Speaker 3: so that's not the culprit. People look at COVID. There
Speaker 3: was a dip, but not as pronounced as you would think,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of numbers have basically leveled out, so
Speaker 3: it's not like you could totally blame that. Then people
Speaker 3: talk about smartphones and attention and there's different things. Then
Speaker 3: there's also stuff about schools teaching kids excerpts instead of
Speaker 3: full books because no one's going to pay attention to
Speaker 3: doing that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 8: A disturbing new report on what kids are reading, or
Speaker 8: rather not reading, in school the New York Times with
Speaker 8: this headline, kids rarely read whole books anymore, even in
Speaker 8: English class.
Speaker 5: If four books was a typical number of books to
Speaker 5: be experiencing in high school English language arts, now we're
Speaker 5: seeing many schools reporting that kids are experiencing only one
Speaker 5: even two books in high school in LA. So something's
Speaker 5: going amiss.
Speaker 3: Have you guys seen this? People not reading as far
Speaker 3: as among peers and also any younger people you might
Speaker 3: be around.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I really noticed this with my brother, he's in
Speaker 7: high school now, he's in a senior year of high school.
Speaker 7: We were talking. This is a year or two ago.
Speaker 7: It was summer and I was saying, what books do
Speaker 7: you have to read this summer?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: He said, what do you mean, what books do I
Speaker 7: have to read this summer? I was like, don't you
Speaker 7: get like books assigned from school summer reading?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Everybody gets your summer reading from school.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we would get like two I think it was
Speaker 7: like two books, you know, everybody would wait till last
Speaker 7: minute to do it. Yeah, and you may have to
Speaker 7: spark no, half the book whatever.
Speaker 3: But oh yeah, you're not a book you were supposed
Speaker 3: to read.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you had a book that was assigned to you
Speaker 7: that you were supposed to read. And said, we don't
Speaker 7: get summer reading. I was like, okay, is that a
Speaker 7: new thing. Have you ever gotten some reading? He's like, no,
Speaker 7: we've never gotten some reading. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 7: do you read books during school? It's like, yeah, sometimes
Speaker 7: we're reading class. I was like, do they give you
Speaker 7: books to read on your own? He said no, And
Speaker 7: I was like, okay, this is a high school who
Speaker 7: is not being assigned a single book to read in
Speaker 7: its entirety.
Speaker 2: That's crazy And you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: Such a stark difference from when we were reading multiple
Speaker 1: books a yere yeah.
Speaker 7: And look a lot of kids didn't read the books,
Speaker 7: but the expectation was that you were to read the.
Speaker 3: Book and you were talking about the book in full,
Speaker 3: not like here's this one chapter m hm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: My feeling on it is that there's a bit of
Speaker 7: a reaction to kids don't have attention spans, they aren't
Speaker 7: reading anyway, Why would I waste time assigning them something
Speaker 7: they aren't going to read, so it's just sort of
Speaker 7: a waste of time. So now we're at the point
Speaker 7: where the bar has been lowered to the point where
Speaker 7: it's not even an expectation for them to read.
Speaker 2: So then it's like, yeah, why would he read?
Speaker 7: Like my brother does not like read books for fun,
Speaker 7: you know, and like at his age, I wasn't really either.
Speaker 2: I was reading what I had to read for school everything.
Speaker 7: Once in a while would pick up a book, but
Speaker 7: like I didn't really start reading for fun until like
Speaker 7: after college. Most of my reading during high school was
Speaker 7: because I had to read for school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you think it's mainly like the attention span thing?
Speaker 3: And why do you think that has changed so much?
Speaker 1: The obvious thing that sticks out to me is in
Speaker 1: terms of what's changed since we were in high school,
Speaker 1: is like phone usage. Yeah, just the amount of time
Speaker 1: you spend on your phone, the kind of things you
Speaker 1: see on your phone. Like when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: you could basically text someone on your phone and that
Speaker 1: was it. Like there wasn't that you didn't like watch
Speaker 1: videos or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you weren't on social media on your phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to. You did you have to go
Speaker 1: home and get on your dial up internet to get
Speaker 1: on Facebook to send a Facebook status?
Speaker 3: And you did? And I did, trust I.
Speaker 1: Was on there. My cursory guess here is that it's
Speaker 1: got to be the attention span thing.
Speaker 7: And it's not just kids right now. I think the
Speaker 7: adults are nobody reads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's my thing. I think you can find
Speaker 3: surveys of how many books adults read too, obviously, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it's easier, especially when trying to get comprehensive data. My
Speaker 3: guess is to research obviously for schools and students. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like it seems more important than like telling them
Speaker 3: forty year old, well.
Speaker 2: There's the thing.
Speaker 7: It's like, yeah, you learn the skill of doing it,
Speaker 7: and it's like yeah, even if you haven't read a
Speaker 7: book in you know, ten years, it's like, well you
Speaker 7: could read a book. I think it's different. That's just
Speaker 7: the same thing with me of like AI with younger people,
Speaker 7: it's like, yeah, okay, we know how to write a
Speaker 7: fifteen page you know, essay ourselves. So if I were
Speaker 7: using ad to do it now, not great, But like
Speaker 7: I've done the thing, so I know kind of what
Speaker 7: goes into it. If you've never read a single book
Speaker 7: in your entire life, how does that impact how you
Speaker 7: interpret you? Like they're saying people can't read passages in
Speaker 7: that simple information, right. I think a lot of times
Speaker 7: it gets spun into like an attention span thing, which
Speaker 7: is obviously yeah, that's part of it, But I think
Speaker 7: a bigger issue is, like people can comprehend very basic
Speaker 7: things a little bit, like you know, Facebook, TikTok, brain
Speaker 7: of just sort of like people can basically read headlines
Speaker 7: and that's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that kind of leads to another question is
Speaker 3: basically does this actually matter? Like what are the impacts
Speaker 3: of this sort of thing if people just largely don't read?
Speaker 3: Like what if tech and communication and the way we
Speaker 3: share information is moving into different mediums and formats, So
Speaker 3: whether that's you know, short form video like TikTok, or
Speaker 3: longer form media but audio only like a podcast, or
Speaker 3: just like shorter texts, like what if we just learn
Speaker 3: through tweets?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do you think are the pitfalls of that?
Speaker 7: I just don't think we're a society right now it
Speaker 7: values reading in it in a real way.
Speaker 2: That's it to me.
Speaker 3: I think it's like there's no emphasis from anyone to
Speaker 3: actually spend time. I mean, and it's not even just
Speaker 3: about okay, focusing to read a novel or something. It's
Speaker 3: like everyone just used to these really short whether it's
Speaker 3: bullet points or TikTok's or something, and it's like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: there are a great TikTok creators out there talking about
Speaker 3: politics or whatever, but like you're not going to get
Speaker 3: a full story in even the best version of that.
Speaker 2: It's an introduction.
Speaker 3: It's a different thing. And I think people just take
Speaker 3: that as like, oh, I learned this from this TikTok
Speaker 3: and then yeah, they'll flash up the headlines and the
Speaker 3: bullet points with the statistics of whatever issue, but you're
Speaker 3: not getting any full story from that sure, And I
Speaker 3: think that's like slowly than just degrading how we process
Speaker 3: and like comprehend not only information, but it kind of
Speaker 3: flattens out any nuance you could have for anything. And
Speaker 3: even a podcast. I think it's the same thing where
Speaker 3: it's like you can listen to a three hour long
Speaker 3: podcast about health or fitness or whatever or whatever any
Speaker 3: of the dumb things we do. I think this all
Speaker 3: the time, Like whatever we're doing a forty five minute
Speaker 3: episode in this you would be better served if you
Speaker 3: read five articles on this in that time. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: like and actually read them.
Speaker 7: The amount of information that we learned for the thing
Speaker 7: that we're like, this is too much information to put
Speaker 7: in the episode, right, Like when we're doing our own research,
Speaker 7: it's like we know a lot more information. And obviously
Speaker 7: then we're saying in the episodes themselves, so like you're saying, yeah,
Speaker 7: it is only scratching the surface. I think people now
Speaker 7: want It's like people just want other people to think
Speaker 7: for them. Yeah, that's why people like, oh, I'm watching
Speaker 7: the TikTok.
Speaker 2: This guy's done all the research already.
Speaker 7: He this is what he finds to be the most
Speaker 7: important things, and like that's what people love AI.
Speaker 2: Right, It's like it just summarizes things for you.
Speaker 7: You don't have to go through read the articles, pull
Speaker 7: out the information, go through the studies, you know, actually
Speaker 7: read the conclusions, look at the data. Someone has done
Speaker 7: all that work for you and you can learn it
Speaker 7: in ninety seconds yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, or faster if you hit that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, you can speed it up.
Speaker 7: So it's like I get and look, I think in
Speaker 7: some ways it's great, right, Like, I think we are
Speaker 7: at a time where if you want to learn stuff,
Speaker 7: you know, there's more information than ever. And for a
Speaker 7: lot of things, No, I don't want to read an
Speaker 7: article about, you know, some of these topics that I'm
Speaker 7: watching TikTok's about. Sometimes the TikTok is enough information and
Speaker 7: it's not something I care that deeply about, and it's
Speaker 7: something like, oh, I'm a little bit informed about this
Speaker 7: thing and I would be not informed at all about
Speaker 7: it if there were not a TikTok about it because
Speaker 7: I wouldn't read an article.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not totally useless, but yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: different thing.
Speaker 2: But it can't be everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think it's just a big cultural thing,
Speaker 3: like it just not pushed whether we can talk about
Speaker 3: school curriculum. But I just think like we don't really
Speaker 3: value people actually having real deep knowledge about things at all,
Speaker 3: because even just think about something silly where it's like
Speaker 3: like the performative mail meme really annoyed me because it's
Speaker 3: like it implies that like, of course, like yeah, of
Speaker 3: course there's gonna be some guy in college who like
Speaker 3: gets into some like Joan Didion so he can talk
Speaker 3: to the cute girl at the coffee shop, but like
Speaker 3: to act like any guy sitting at a park reading
Speaker 3: is doing that not because he wants to read, but
Speaker 3: because he's trying to get laid. It's just like that
Speaker 3: could be part of it, but like it just like,
Speaker 3: well shows how the bar well it just show Yeah,
Speaker 3: it just shows. Like I think to me, it more
Speaker 3: says like anyone saying that can't ever comprehend wanting to
Speaker 3: spend their free time spend I think fifteen minutes reading
Speaker 3: a book. So instead they're like, oh, it would be
Speaker 3: a lot cool if he was staring at his phone
Speaker 3: watching a dumb ass talk about nothing. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like that's cool.
Speaker 6: Projection.
Speaker 1: We don't incentivize people to read. Yeah, like some I
Speaker 1: have run into this and I you know, I should
Speaker 1: be paying some more money. But like I'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to read more about this thing and it's
Speaker 1: paywalld and I'm like all right, well never mind. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just the search for information stops there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's a good point too, right. It's getting
Speaker 7: harder to access.
Speaker 3: High quality good yeah, the good stuff information. So what
Speaker 3: I want to do is I want to find out
Speaker 3: is this literacy declined real? What does it mean? And
Speaker 3: what can we do to combat it if it actually
Speaker 3: is a real problem. I'm going to talk to a
Speaker 3: teacher first, then an author, and then a scholar who's
Speaker 3: looked into this data to find out what's actually going on.
Speaker 3: Well done, after the break, after the break, that's right, all.
Speaker 7: Right, fellas. I need you to help me with a
Speaker 7: problem that I got. You know, usually we're the ones
Speaker 7: helping other people with their problems. But I'm about to
Speaker 7: go abroad and I'm going to watch Met games. Noah,
Speaker 7: How can I watch them?
Speaker 2: That's a tough one.
Speaker 3: Maybe get a really large telescope.
Speaker 7: I don't think that's the best way to do it. Manny,
Speaker 7: Do you have any solutions on how I can watch
Speaker 7: Mets games?
Speaker 2: You broad?
Speaker 1: I think I've got a slightly more practical solution for you, Devin.
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Speaker 3: What about my privacy online? I'm worried someone's watching me.
Speaker 1: First of all, no one is watching you, Noah. But
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Speaker 1: It's like wearing an invisibility cloak while you're surfing the web.
Speaker 7: Sounds comfy, So, Manny, I've heard about these VPNs and
Speaker 7: how they're super slipt.
Speaker 2: How do I make sure my internet is not throttling?
Speaker 1: If you want to use a VPN without slowing down
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Speaker 3: Nst All right, we're back. We're talking about the alleged
Speaker 3: decline of reading. So the first couple interviews that I
Speaker 3: want to share are with people who are active in
Speaker 3: the children's literacy space.
Speaker 9: I'm Kelsey Kladbalter.
Speaker 10: I've been teaching English for This is my eleventh year
Speaker 10: now and I've taught in both Chicago and Minnesota.
Speaker 9: I teach freshman and juniors right now.
Speaker 3: Kelsey aka Miss C has a big following on TikTok,
Speaker 3: where she shares what it's like to teach kids today.
Speaker 10: I have an idea that has been germinating for a
Speaker 10: while and it has taken hold of my brain, and
Speaker 10: it's called Nineties Classroom. The idea is simple, what if
Speaker 10: next year I do everything within my power to revive
Speaker 10: the spirit of the nineties in my classroom, to bring
Speaker 10: back the best parts of being a student and a
Speaker 10: teacher in that era.
Speaker 4: Mind you, this was.
Speaker 10: Pre phones, pre chromebooks, pre AI, pre state testing.
Speaker 9: I think here's my vision.
Speaker 10: Extremely limited technology, books everywhere, over stuffed couch in the corner.
Speaker 10: The room's bustling with human interaction. I feel like this
Speaker 10: is doable. I do have the affliction of believing everything's
Speaker 10: doable for me, but this one, especially nineties classroom, let's.
Speaker 5: Do it.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: According to measures like the nation's report card, reading and
Speaker 3: math levels have declined to their lowest level in like
Speaker 3: over twenty years. Have you seen this in your experience
Speaker 3: teaching over the past few years.
Speaker 10: Definitely, I mean I think just in like I said,
Speaker 10: my eleven year career, I've even noticed a decline. But
Speaker 10: I think the comparison most millennial teachers draw is just
Speaker 10: comparing our own educational experience where many of us were
Speaker 10: like very avid readers, and also there is a pretty
Speaker 10: high expectation for how much and how well we should
Speaker 10: be reading to what we're seeing now with high school
Speaker 10: age students. I've been at a couple schools where we
Speaker 10: were told, like, we do not teach novels.
Speaker 9: We teach excerpts. We teach short texts.
Speaker 10: Students can read full length novels that they choose to,
Speaker 10: but we don't teach novels. It's a waste of time
Speaker 10: being that is very frustrating because you can see how
Speaker 10: districts are directly contributing to the decline in students being
Speaker 10: able to engage with longer form texts.
Speaker 3: Is it a shift because they want to just focus
Speaker 3: on maybe getting better test scores and they think that's
Speaker 3: an easy way to do it, or do they think
Speaker 3: it's more like the kids won't read longer books, so
Speaker 3: let's just not even try.
Speaker 9: I think it's both. I think it's both for sure.
Speaker 10: I think there's definitely the element of students will do
Speaker 10: better on standardized tests if we drill them with these
Speaker 10: short form passages and the questions they'll see on those tests.
Speaker 10: I think the instinct is understandable, But the consequences of
Speaker 10: years and years of a curriculum like this is really
Speaker 10: really negative.
Speaker 3: So I mean the ironic thing too, is the scores
Speaker 3: aren't even going up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you spend more time.
Speaker 3: Like you're doing all this to get what the kids
Speaker 3: will do for the test scores and then going down.
Speaker 3: So then I kind of asked about that, the kind
Speaker 3: of question about like, well, it's a modern world.
Speaker 2: Maybe we're just.
Speaker 3: Evolving in a different way and we don't need this
Speaker 3: skill as much.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think I've had I've been in a lot
Speaker 10: of arguments with people about this. I'm just recalling a
Speaker 10: conversation I had a few years ago at another school
Speaker 10: where I taught, and I was arguing with the math
Speaker 10: teacher who basically said, anything students need to learn they
Speaker 10: can learn from YouTube videos, Like anything you need to
Speaker 10: know how to do, you don't need to read a book.
Speaker 9: You can watch YouTube video.
Speaker 10: And my argument to that was just this idea of
Speaker 10: learning as a technical how to is really really different
Speaker 10: from how I conceive of learning right.
Speaker 9: I think, like the beauty of a.
Speaker 10: Long form text and being able to immerse yourself in
Speaker 10: a completely different perspective. It builds empathy, it broadens your worldview,
Speaker 10: It just does so many things that I think a
Speaker 10: YouTube video on how to fix a faucet is like
Speaker 10: not even in the same category of what we're talking
Speaker 10: about here. I guess the idea there is an idea
Speaker 10: that you should gain something tangible from reading, right, that
Speaker 10: you should leave with a piece of knowledge that you
Speaker 10: can then implement in the world and it will help.
Speaker 9: You in some way. And I think the goal and.
Speaker 10: Purpose of reading is so much more and kind of
Speaker 10: amorphous and ill defined. So I get why schools may
Speaker 10: be resistant to teach something that it's really hard to
Speaker 10: explain how this actually helps students, But the people who
Speaker 10: believe that it does are really passionate about saying.
Speaker 9: Yes, it does.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit more about generally, like the phones.
Speaker 3: Do you think that's a big piece of why maybe
Speaker 3: they're not able to pay attention to long form books anymore.
Speaker 9: For sure.
Speaker 10: I mean, I have really really great students, So like
Speaker 10: right now, we're reading a Gabrielle Garcia Marquez book in
Speaker 10: my advanced literature class, and students will read parts of
Speaker 10: the book and then they'll just tell me I didn't
Speaker 10: understand any of that, and we'll try to kind of
Speaker 10: go through and break down why. And it's not actually
Speaker 10: a comprehension issue. It's like a distraction issue. So I'm like, okay,
Speaker 10: this sentence, I'll read it aloud and they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 10: I didn't see that when I was reading it. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 10: but when I read it to you, you didn't understand it, right,
Speaker 10: And they're like, yeah, totally. So it's like they are
Speaker 10: even self aware that as they're reading, they're kind of
Speaker 10: zoning out. Their brains are going a million different places.
Speaker 10: It's something I experience as well as like a very
Speaker 10: online person. When I am sitting down at night and
Speaker 10: trying to read, The first ten minutes are just like
Speaker 10: my brains everywhere, and then I can finally kind of
Speaker 10: get into a flow state, so I can't even imagine
Speaker 10: what they're dealing with as growing up. You know, many
Speaker 10: of them are self proclaimed iPad kids, right, like raised
Speaker 10: on iPads. Trying to sit down and like immerse yourself
Speaker 10: in a book is really challenging.
Speaker 1: It's so fascinating. I mean, even in our conversation about
Speaker 1: the importance of reading, like, I definitely do find it
Speaker 1: a little bit harder to read than I did when
Speaker 1: I was like earlier life. Sure, and I'll have to
Speaker 1: like like go back and read a page again or like.
Speaker 1: And I think probably it does have a lot to
Speaker 1: do with how we consume information and other aspects of
Speaker 1: our lives, like in social media. So you know, on
Speaker 1: one hand, it's like, damn, I wish these kids were
Speaker 1: reading more. On the other hand, you kind of can't
Speaker 1: blame them. It's like the world they grew up in.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like you were saying, it's like so hard
Speaker 3: for us to pay attention. Like even if I'm reading
Speaker 3: a book, a printed book, Yeah, every couple pages, I'll
Speaker 3: stop and look at my phone, nothing going on. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's like I feel like I'm actually
Speaker 3: pretty good at reading every day something.
Speaker 7: I agree now it is, Yeah, I hear her. I
Speaker 7: think that there is a lot of finger pointing. That's
Speaker 7: why I'm like, for me, it's like not about the
Speaker 7: kids not reading, it's about changing the expectations to not
Speaker 7: have them read because it's like, yeah, it's tough to read, period,
Speaker 7: It's gonna be even tougher to read if there's no.
Speaker 2: Expectation of you to read. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah if I if I was not assigned books in
Speaker 7: high school to read, I don't know how much reading
Speaker 7: I would be.
Speaker 2: Doing in high school.
Speaker 7: So it's not like they say, like these kids are
Speaker 7: so much dumber, like they don't have what I had.
Speaker 7: It's just sort of like, oh, you don't expect them
Speaker 7: to do the things right and they're not going to
Speaker 7: do it.
Speaker 3: Lastly, I asked Kelsey, what does she think would help
Speaker 3: fix this.
Speaker 9: I think it comes down to tension.
Speaker 10: Like I think a lot of teachers myself for a
Speaker 10: long time in my career to avoid any kind of tension,
Speaker 10: and I'm unfortunately like to help students read better, they
Speaker 10: have to do the very unpleasant work of sitting there
Speaker 10: and actually forcing themselves to read, and you, as the teacher,
Speaker 10: have to do the very unpleasant work of like calling
Speaker 10: out when they're not or being like all right, y'all.
Speaker 10: We are reading this book right now. We are five
Speaker 10: minutes in, and I see no one as looking at
Speaker 10: the page like what is going on. A lot of
Speaker 10: us two in our teaching have really been fed this
Speaker 10: idea that everything has to be like super glitzy and
Speaker 10: engaging all the time, and that students should be like
Speaker 10: on the edge of their seat, like doing fun collaborative activities.
Speaker 10: And I just think, like, I know, kids aren't going
Speaker 10: to read at home, so we're going to read and
Speaker 10: discussing class, and I think that can make things feel
Speaker 10: a little bit dull and even ten sometimes, But I
Speaker 10: think it's worth it.
Speaker 3: As far as maybe bigger picture, like whether it's from
Speaker 3: a I don't know if it's a government policy standpoint.
Speaker 3: Do you think there's things that could be coming from
Speaker 3: a higher level that could help get these literacy rates up.
Speaker 3: Do you think it would be a change in the
Speaker 3: testing or what sort of programs might work.
Speaker 10: Curriculum that emphasizes the importance of long form texts is necessary.
Speaker 10: I'm actually really lucky to teach at an IB school,
Speaker 10: and the IB curriculum is designed around a variety of
Speaker 10: long form and short form texts. But you really deep
Speaker 10: dive into certain authors. So like, for example, when students
Speaker 10: study poetry, they study a set of poems by one author,
Speaker 10: and that's like a really cool opportunity to go deep
Speaker 10: into their style. You also have to read like a
Speaker 10: certain number of novels, a certain number of dramas, and
Speaker 10: I think that is really really beneficial for students other
Speaker 10: schools that have not had that type of curriculum that
Speaker 10: have more pushed like the test prep thing.
Speaker 9: I feel like the test prep.
Speaker 10: Model is what we really need to move away from,
Speaker 10: and that is definitely something that can be influenced, like
Speaker 10: at the state and policy level.
Speaker 2: I like this what she said. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I read for fun.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's boring to read for fun, but
Speaker 7: I do think there is that tension that, like, sometimes
Speaker 7: you don't want to read. Sometimes I force myself to
Speaker 7: read when I'm like not in the mood to read
Speaker 7: because I'm just like, yeah, I could scroll on my
Speaker 7: phone for TikTok for thirty minutes, or I can, you know,
Speaker 7: read this chapter of this book, and like I'll feel
Speaker 7: better after reading the chapter of the book than I
Speaker 7: will after scrolling TikTok. Definitely, but it takes, you know,
Speaker 7: like she's saying, sometimes, you know, it takes a little
Speaker 7: bit to get into it. You know, you have to
Speaker 7: kind of have to force yourself like, Okay, I gotta focus.
Speaker 7: I gotta like put my head down and do this.
Speaker 7: You know, no one is We've never been on TikTok
Speaker 7: or you know, Instagram or whatever and been like I
Speaker 7: really gotta get my mind and yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 7: just like yeah, yeah, we're doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So I think there is that discipline, and it like
Speaker 7: you will get to a place that is rewarding and
Speaker 7: will feel like you know, like we're talking about, you
Speaker 7: get engrossed in these worlds, but it takes more time
Speaker 7: to truly get into it.
Speaker 2: And I think it.
Speaker 7: I'm glad that she's like, you know, forcing those kids
Speaker 7: to have discipline and just like shut up and read
Speaker 7: in class. And it's like, yeah, we can do all
Speaker 7: that collaborative fun stuff once you read the book, and
Speaker 7: if you read at home, we wouldn't have to do this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: So next up, I spoke to number one New York
Speaker 3: Times bestselling children's book author Jason Reynolds. He's written books
Speaker 3: such as Long Way Down, Ghost and many, many more.
Speaker 3: Jason has also received the Newberry Honor and NAACP Image Award,
Speaker 3: just to name a few billet points on his resume.
Speaker 2: I wanted to.
Speaker 3: Speak to Jason in particular because of his book Soundtrack,
Speaker 3: which was originally released in twenty twenty five as an
Speaker 3: audiobook only. I wondered, in a time of a so
Speaker 3: called literacy crisis, why would you publish something only as audio.
Speaker 3: It turns out it started off as a traditional print
Speaker 3: novel unpublished.
Speaker 4: I'd written a novel a decade ago that sat in
Speaker 4: a drawer, right, I wrote this thing, and for whatever
Speaker 4: reason my publishers at the time, I don't know if
Speaker 4: they didn't see it right, they didn't see the vision
Speaker 4: of the story, or if there are other stories that
Speaker 4: I'd written sort of you know, took precedence right, And
Speaker 4: so after while, the book kept getting bumped, and eventually
Speaker 4: it just kind of set and you know, precatorial drawer.
Speaker 3: Years later, a contact of his at Penguin Random House
Speaker 3: Audio was looking for original audio projects, and Soundtrack, which
Speaker 3: is a book about music, was released into the world anyway.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Soundtrack is also available in print, but very much reads
Speaker 3: like an audio first project. And Jason's focus was on
Speaker 3: the format serving the story. He used this example of
Speaker 3: an older fellow you might be familiar with.
Speaker 4: I love Shakespeare, and sometimes I wonder just how much
Speaker 4: of a disservice we have done by reading it so
Speaker 4: often and not seeing it ever right when it was
Speaker 4: meant to be seen. You know, it's easier to understand
Speaker 4: if you could just see it, but instead we're like
Speaker 4: studying it line for line, you know.
Speaker 3: Which is helpful, but maybe helpful after we already kind
Speaker 3: of know.
Speaker 4: After we see it exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Why I asked what he thought about, you know, audiobooks,
Speaker 3: people who look down on them.
Speaker 4: People are just so weird about about that. Right. It's
Speaker 4: like if you give a baby a bottle of milk,
Speaker 4: this account is eating, yes, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: and the nourishment that that milk is having is it's
Speaker 4: still valuable, whether it's being liquefied or whether it's something
Speaker 4: that has to be cheated. That the nutrients are the nutrients, right,
Speaker 4: And so I don't like it, and I think it's
Speaker 4: just weird that leadism around like what the book is
Speaker 4: supposed to be and by the way, the and why
Speaker 4: I feel that this sort of there's just weird and
Speaker 4: leadism is because I actually don't think that people look
Speaker 4: at literature or at books quote unquote books as art.
Speaker 4: I think they look at them as as sort of
Speaker 4: intellectual touchdowns. And it's the only of all the art mediums,
Speaker 4: by the way, I would argue that it might be
Speaker 4: the only one that is this way. People put boundaries
Speaker 4: on even the container that a story can be, and
Speaker 4: let alone boundaries on the stories themselves, And so I
Speaker 4: think all of it is foolish. Either we want the
Speaker 4: world to have stories or we don't. Either we want
Speaker 4: to make them super accessible, or we want to create
Speaker 4: gates around them so that only a few of us
Speaker 4: have an opportunity to access them. Either we're going to
Speaker 4: complain about how we want them to be at the
Speaker 4: forefront of culture, right And if we complain about it,
Speaker 4: then we fight to make it so that they are
Speaker 4: at the forefront of culture by making them accessible and changing,
Speaker 4: and by creating multiple formats in which they can live.
Speaker 4: Or we sort of throw sts from the other side
Speaker 4: of the road with our you know, our arms full
Speaker 4: of you know, paper tones, you know, and pat ourselves
Speaker 4: on the back of that way for having done the
Speaker 4: hard work quote unquote let alone. People don't realize how
Speaker 4: much concentration it requires to also listen to a book.
Speaker 3: Oh right, yeah, yeah, that's a big thing.
Speaker 4: But it's just nonsense and like silly ways for people
Speaker 4: to sort of figure out ways to separate themselves intellectually.
Speaker 4: And so I'd rather not even our tea.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it would be beautiful if we were
Speaker 7: saying we can't get kids to read, they're just listening
Speaker 7: to audiobooks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: I think you know, I think that'd be a pretty
Speaker 7: good place for us to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: Next I asked the big question, do you believe we're
Speaker 3: in a reading crisis? Here's what Jason Reynolds had to say.
Speaker 4: Do I believe we're in a reading crisis? I think
Speaker 4: globally we're in a reading crisis, and I think there
Speaker 4: are lots of things that we could maybe put to
Speaker 4: figure out what is causing the crisis. It's impossible for
Speaker 4: us to deny the impacts of technology. It's simply because
Speaker 4: of the injection of hyperstimulation. And you know, it's like, yo,
Speaker 4: I have so many other things to do. There was
Speaker 4: a point in the world where there was theater, cinemaup, radio,
Speaker 4: eventually television, and then there was the book. And the
Speaker 4: only one of those things that you that you could
Speaker 4: entertain yourself on the go with would have been in
Speaker 4: the book. But book as an object to have on
Speaker 4: the body, on the person in a way that now
Speaker 4: the phone is and in that laptop and on that
Speaker 4: phone is the world a Collido scope of distraction. And
Speaker 4: by the way, we talk about this in this way
Speaker 4: because I write for kids, we always talk about young
Speaker 4: people because we see and I get why I write
Speaker 4: the stakes or how we want to make sure that
Speaker 4: they are literate. So like it makes sense, but the
Speaker 4: majority of adults don't read. It could even be argue
Speaker 4: that they read less because they don't have to. So
Speaker 4: then there are other questions that one must ask. Right
Speaker 4: Number one, as reading being modeled in the home, we
Speaker 4: be blaming kids. It's always like, man, those kids, they're
Speaker 4: not they just don't read anymore, man, And it's like, well, yes,
Speaker 4: and we should sort of sort this out. But I
Speaker 4: think there are other questions that we have to ask ourselves.
Speaker 4: Like I've heard I've had arguments around like expectations that
Speaker 4: we should keep expectations high for young people so that
Speaker 4: they can lead to expectations. I don't disagree with that.
Speaker 4: I just think we need to also recalibrate what the
Speaker 4: baseline is to meet them where they are for this
Speaker 4: moment in this culture, at this particular era of society. Right,
Speaker 4: That's all I'm saying. Right, So, like, so like if
Speaker 4: we're if we're recalibrating the baseline, then maybe we maybe
Speaker 4: we don't start with Melville or Hidden Way or start back, right,
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe we start with something that feels a little
Speaker 4: more contemporary and something and that feels a little more fresh.
Speaker 4: Maybe we start with me, or we start with some
Speaker 4: of our contemporaries and partners. Right, they love Captain Underpants,
Speaker 4: And I know everyone's like, but that's not literature. It's
Speaker 4: like it is it not? If Pilki got millions of
Speaker 4: kids to read, you know what you think? Because because
Speaker 4: no one had a problem with Cat and the Hat,
Speaker 4: no one had a problem with the silliness and the
Speaker 4: goofiness of Doctor Seuss back back then, especially like we
Speaker 4: didn't have any issues with that, why not lean into
Speaker 4: dog Man and like, why not?
Speaker 7: That's how I got my brother to read, Like when
Speaker 7: he was younger, he wouldn't want to read anything else.
Speaker 7: We got him into the Diary ver One Can and
Speaker 7: Captain Underpants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta level up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Lastly, Jason told me an anecdote about how such an
Speaker 3: intense focus on data and numbers can result in negative outcomes.
Speaker 4: I'd done an event at Forbes years ago. They were
Speaker 4: talking about spreadsheets. It's all very cut and dry, bottom
Speaker 4: line mathematics. Right, this is what, this is what the
Speaker 4: chart show. We're doing projections, we're doing this. There was
Speaker 4: a mantra they kept saying where they said, the numbers
Speaker 4: are all that counts, right, the numbers. And then it
Speaker 4: was my turn to speak, and I said, you know,
Speaker 4: that's something that then the world that scares me if anyone,
Speaker 4: if I ever heard anyone say the numbers are the
Speaker 4: only thing that counts, I say, because if you look
Speaker 4: at the numbers, the numbers will say tell you something
Speaker 4: like kids, and you know, especially let's say twenty twelve, right,
Speaker 4: they'll say kids in black communities aren't reading. Right, black
Speaker 4: boys especially I'm reading. Publishers say based on the numbers, right,
Speaker 4: if black boys aren't reading, then we need not publish
Speaker 4: books about black boys because they don't read, So it'll
Speaker 4: be a waste of our time to publish books about
Speaker 4: black boys because that's what the numbers say. Until you
Speaker 4: get somebody with a different interpretation of the numbers. And
Speaker 4: if I walk in that room and I see those
Speaker 4: same numbers, I say, black boys aren't reading. So we
Speaker 4: should probably publish books about black boys so that they
Speaker 4: could read. But we can bring them in. Maybe they're
Speaker 4: not reading because there is a deficit when it comes
Speaker 4: to them reading things they feel directly connected too. And
Speaker 4: the people will say, well they you know, kids shouldn't
Speaker 4: have to feel directly connected to this, that and the third.
Speaker 4: Not every kid does.
Speaker 11: But if we're paying attention to what's going on, maybe
Speaker 11: these are at least some things we should consider. Why
Speaker 11: don't we do tests and study the samples of the
Speaker 11: books that I'm working and say, well, if long Way
Speaker 11: Down works in a particular way, why does it work,
Speaker 11: and how do we figure out how to incorporate this more.
Speaker 11: If ghost is working in a certain way, why does
Speaker 11: it work? If they hate you give work in a
Speaker 11: particular way, why does this book work? And granted you
Speaker 11: can't always get this right because artists are artists. Authors
Speaker 11: are are artists, and they're making the things they're making.
Speaker 11: Don't You don't want to turn this into some.
Speaker 4: Sort of empirical rubric that you repeat over and over
Speaker 4: and over again, because you rob yourself and you rob
Speaker 4: the young people of understanding the beauty and fastness of
Speaker 4: what art could actually be. Right, So I'm not saying that.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying I'm just saying we do have ways
Speaker 4: to study what is happening to figure out how we
Speaker 4: shift curriculum in general that might be a little more engaging.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that this is the only answer. I'm
Speaker 4: saying that maybe this is the beginning of the bigger answer.
Speaker 3: But I think it's a good point where it's like
Speaker 3: you can look at the stats and then end up
Speaker 3: doing the opposite of what you want by making it
Speaker 3: less appealing. Yeah, whether that's like he's saying, holding certain
Speaker 3: standards for too long or expectations for too long and
Speaker 3: not adjusting them to actually get people to read, carving
Speaker 3: out basically certain groups and being like, well they'll never
Speaker 3: relate to this or something, so why bother that sort
Speaker 3: of thing, when like, obviously that's not true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a good idea about like packaging reading
Speaker 1: in certain ways because we're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to beat technology, so to speak.
Speaker 3: That was miss c and Jason Reynolds on reading. But
Speaker 3: when we're back after this commercial break, we hear from
Speaker 3: someone who says there is no crisis in reading. Oh
Speaker 3: and we've been looking at this all wrong.
Speaker 2: I'm Manny Noah Devin.
Speaker 3: All right, we're back, So we're talking about the so
Speaker 3: called reading crisis in America. So lastly I talked to
Speaker 3: Paul Thomas.
Speaker 6: I am a professor of education at Furman University, which
Speaker 6: is in Greenville, South Carolina, and probably from my voice
Speaker 6: you can tell I'm from South Carolina. I've been here
Speaker 6: my whole life. I was a high school English teacher
Speaker 6: for eighteen years before I went to higher ed and
Speaker 6: I've been doing this forty two years now.
Speaker 3: Paul says that all these stories, these pessimistic stories, but
Speaker 3: the decline of reading and more specifically the decline of
Speaker 3: reading scores and schools are fundamentally misreading the data and
Speaker 3: misleading the public. He said, we can't read, that's what
Speaker 3: he said data, saying the public is being misled as
Speaker 3: to the severity of the issue. What if we've been
Speaker 3: looking at this wrong. Wow, the entire time.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sit down, if you're listening, sit down, sitting down,
Speaker 3: stop your cars, if you're cooking over now, get a
Speaker 3: school at least all right, here's what Paul had to say.
Speaker 3: There's been all these articles more recent. But also then
Speaker 3: it's like when you do a search for it, these
Speaker 3: kind of come up every every few years. So I'm
Speaker 3: sure you're very well familiar. I'll ask you. Are we
Speaker 3: in a reading crisis?
Speaker 6: No, this is sort of paradoxical. Either we have always
Speaker 6: been in a reading crisis or we've never been in
Speaker 6: a reading crisis. I just don't like the word crisis
Speaker 6: because I always use like the example of the plane
Speaker 6: that the Sulenberg that you know, the crash landing and
Speaker 6: the Hudson, that's a crisis. Everybody's behavior in that was
Speaker 6: extreme because it was needed. So I worry when we
Speaker 6: say crisis, we're going to do extreme things. And that's
Speaker 6: what's happening. And as you mentioned a second ago, almost
Speaker 6: word for word, almost claim for claim, this happened in
Speaker 6: the forties. It happened in the fifties, So I don't
Speaker 6: think we're in a crisis. I just think the situation
Speaker 6: we have with reading is essentially the same it's always been.
Speaker 6: We're underserving certain population of students, and overall, most people
Speaker 6: learn to read and function relatively well in the world,
Speaker 6: and probably read more and can read better than we
Speaker 6: think now those underserved populations like black and brown children,
Speaker 6: multi lingual learners, special needs students, to me, it's a
Speaker 6: crime that we don't serve those students, but we never have.
Speaker 6: That is not some new thing that's been caused by
Speaker 6: a particular reading program.
Speaker 3: So one of these stats that people tend to use
Speaker 3: in these articles is this National report Card. You contend
Speaker 3: that this is being totally misread or misrepresented as far
Speaker 3: as what it's actually measuring and then what the numbers
Speaker 3: are saying. Can you kind of explain what the National
Speaker 3: Report Card is and then how it's being misused when
Speaker 3: we're talking about this crisis.
Speaker 6: We usually use NATE in AEP that's the of the
Speaker 6: letters of the National Assessment of Educational Progress that comes
Speaker 6: out of the Department of Education. The dirty little secret
Speaker 6: about NATEE is it was designed with a little bit
Speaker 6: of intent, probably a lot of intent to make schools
Speaker 6: look bad. The terminology in NATE is very confusing. The
Speaker 6: word that everybody focuses on is proficient. So proficient on
Speaker 6: NATE is at the seventieth percentile that is designed for
Speaker 6: only thirty percent of children to reach. That's the way
Speaker 6: statistics work, that's the way standardized testing works. The misinformation
Speaker 6: I think comes from that. States use the word proficient differently.
Speaker 6: So we give state assessments generally like third grade and
Speaker 6: eighth grade, and then sometimes we've fluctuated, but in high school.
Speaker 6: So when we give a third grade test at the
Speaker 6: state level and we're looking for proficiency, we tend to
Speaker 6: think of that as grade level. So the expectation is
Speaker 6: in South Carolina that ideally all children can be proficient
Speaker 6: in third grade. Those standards for proficient at the state
Speaker 6: level matched the term basic at the NAPE level. So
Speaker 6: the crisis people like journalists and pundits and people trying
Speaker 6: to sell things generally they say that, you know, two
Speaker 6: thirds of students aren't proficient. Well, technically on NAPE that's true.
Speaker 6: It doesn't mean they're not at grade level, and it
Speaker 6: certainly doesn't mean they can't read. Now, historically about a
Speaker 6: third of students sometimes a little more, are below basic
Speaker 6: on NAPE, which certainly may be worth being concerned about.
Speaker 6: Nobody has ever created a standard definition for grade level reading.
Speaker 6: We don't have that in the United States. Every state
Speaker 6: has their own NAPE, has their own and we have
Speaker 6: never sat down as a country and decided what's the threshold.
Speaker 6: Saying that two thirds of students aren't proficient readers is
Speaker 6: at best misleading, and I think purposefully so. I think
Speaker 6: we like for schools to be failing, and I think
Speaker 6: we like as a country, we like for teachers to
Speaker 6: be bad, and we like for students. You know, at
Speaker 6: any point, we all older people all say that kids
Speaker 6: are you know, can't read, don't read, can't do math,
Speaker 6: and it's kind of embarrassing. I mean, just to keep
Speaker 6: saying that over and over.
Speaker 3: What would be the motivation for people making these measures
Speaker 3: to make want the schools to look bad or what's
Speaker 3: kind of Can you kind of tease that out a
Speaker 3: little more.
Speaker 6: I think it's just human nature to idealize what it
Speaker 6: was like when we were young. I try to be realistic.
Speaker 6: I went to junior high in high school in the seventies,
Speaker 6: students were smoking pots in the bathroom in my junior
Speaker 6: high And you cannot tell me that we were a
Speaker 6: brighter generation, that we were more dedicated to learning than
Speaker 6: the students that I taught throughout the eighties and nineties
Speaker 6: and the students that I'm teaching now are just they're brilliant,
Speaker 6: They're very bright human beings. They've had way better education
Speaker 6: than I did. And I think it's just this urge
Speaker 6: to idealize our past, and I think we get a
Speaker 6: little depressed about being older and we want something to
Speaker 6: complain about. Some of it to me too, is I mean,
Speaker 6: just the nature of a capitalist market society. There is profit.
Speaker 6: There's political and financial profit. In crisis, there's political and
Speaker 6: financial profit. Education reform is an industry. Since the early
Speaker 6: nineteen eighties, people have made a lot of money, and
Speaker 6: politicians career have been made. George W. Bush became President
Speaker 6: of the United States almost exclusively own his role as
Speaker 6: a as a as an education governor. Other politicians have
Speaker 6: figured that out. So there's there's profit, human nature, you know,
Speaker 6: idealizing our past, criticizing our current status. I think there's
Speaker 6: a lot of factors that go into it.
Speaker 2: I hear him on the good old days.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I would say, I don't think my parents
Speaker 7: would have said they've gotten better in education.
Speaker 2: Than I did. They would, I don't know, they do not, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they would not have said that.
Speaker 7: So I do think there is a people love to
Speaker 7: glorify a should say, you know, when they went to
Speaker 7: school and whatever. But I do think that our parents
Speaker 7: would say we got better educations than they did, right, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't know if I can say that about my brother. Yeah,
Speaker 7: And you know there's a distance, but it's not that
Speaker 7: much of it there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or like even if reading levels are actually not in
Speaker 1: a crisis, it does seem to be the case that
Speaker 1: we don't even assign books well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And to be clear, for on Paul's behalf,
Speaker 3: he's not saying there's nothing to be done and that
Speaker 3: we're doing better.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's it's like the way we're then
Speaker 3: approaching how to fix this issue is more the issue
Speaker 3: he has, as you'll hear he has lots of problems
Speaker 3: with kind of the way things are going. We go
Speaker 3: pretty deep. First off, you're gonna hear him talking about
Speaker 3: what's called the science of reading. So this isn't just
Speaker 3: like the study of reading. It's it's kind of a
Speaker 3: catch all term for a recent wave of new curriculums
Speaker 3: and teaching styles. Over forty states have passed legislation incorporating
Speaker 3: new programs that fall under this category. I'm sure there's
Speaker 3: tons more we can get into there, obviously, but just
Speaker 3: so when you hear him say science of reading, it's
Speaker 3: he's talking about like a movement and not like studying reading.
Speaker 3: So Paul broke down this science of reading into a
Speaker 3: sort of three pronged multiverse. He's his comic book Guy
Speaker 3: as it says, one is the miracle versus crisis framing,
Speaker 3: two is marketing, and three is research.
Speaker 6: One way I talk about this is the science of
Speaker 6: reading movement is sort of a multiverse. So you've got
Speaker 6: journalists who have two stories. They have crisis and miracle,
Speaker 6: so they're constantly saying education is in crisis, but this
Speaker 6: school or this state is doing miraculous things. I mentioned
Speaker 6: George W. Bush the Texas Miracle, and it's a perfect
Speaker 6: template for what you just asked. It got him huge
Speaker 6: political capital. While George Bush was governor of Texas, there
Speaker 6: was some intense standards in high states testing curriculum reform.
Speaker 6: They raised state testing scores pretty dramatically, and this is
Speaker 6: something that's kind of dangerous. It's really easy to create standards,
Speaker 6: teach to the test, and raised test scores. So at
Speaker 6: the same time he was claiming a miracle and the
Speaker 6: media was kind of eating that up. Researchers in Texas
Speaker 6: scholars education professors looked at the data and noticed at
Speaker 6: the same time that Texas's state scores were going up,
Speaker 6: their NATE scores were going down, and it's harder to
Speaker 6: manipulate those NATE scores, so it was never a miracle.
Speaker 6: And I think, so you get this, the media likes
Speaker 6: crisis miracle, crisis miracle.
Speaker 3: I think that only just scores. It a bit where
Speaker 3: you can teach to the test and get those individual
Speaker 3: scores up, but then the actual like overall reading scores,
Speaker 3: even these ones from NAPE are going down, so it's like, well,
Speaker 3: who's better off. It's like, great, you can take one test,
Speaker 3: but you might not be able to think.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: I think that's a pretty important point. Yeah, So now
Speaker 3: here's the next multiverse.
Speaker 2: Marketing.
Speaker 6: The other multiverse is marketing. Textbook publishers don't really make
Speaker 6: any money if we keep a book that works or
Speaker 6: a program that works. So the weird thing that just
Speaker 6: happened is states have banned all of these reading programs
Speaker 6: Units of Study by Lucy Halkins, stuff by Fontas and Pineale,
Speaker 6: which were moderately popular, but the United States has never
Speaker 6: had one reading program. Units of Study at its most
Speaker 6: was in one out of five schools. There's no way
Speaker 6: that it was causing a crisis. But the same companies
Speaker 6: that owned those programs own the new programs that states
Speaker 6: are adopting. In a market society, churn is really important.
Speaker 6: The other multiverse is actual research, and that's the one
Speaker 6: that is really kind of frustrating because a lot of
Speaker 6: times it's behind a paywall. A lot of times research
Speaker 6: is incredibly difficult to read, and scholars have a tendency
Speaker 6: to be very insular. They don't really take it on
Speaker 6: pund themselves to tell people about their research. They do
Speaker 6: their research. The science of reading movement really it kind
Speaker 6: of started around twenty twelve to twenty fourteen, but it
Speaker 6: really took off around twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: But the research is now catching up. There's states where
Speaker 6: you can actually do the research and see what's happening,
Speaker 6: and a couple of weird things about this movement. One,
Speaker 6: there's not a single scholarly publication. There's not a single
Speaker 6: experimental or quasi experimental published study that shows we have
Speaker 6: a reading crisis caused by balance literacy or by reading programs.
Speaker 6: Nobody's done that research. It doesn't exist. And this whole movement,
Speaker 6: which says it's a science of reading, is based on
Speaker 6: the absence of scientific evidence.
Speaker 3: So, for example, Paul said, there's been no research that
Speaker 3: shows that systematic phonics is more effective. Are all students
Speaker 3: for learning comprehension? And of course we want kids to
Speaker 3: be able to understand what they're reading or well, it's
Speaker 3: kind of not really reading.
Speaker 4: Is it.
Speaker 6: Size of reading has attached itself to a thing called
Speaker 6: structured literacy, and structured literacy is scripted curriculum. Weirdly, that
Speaker 6: was a big thing in Texas around the Bush era,
Speaker 6: and it kind of died out because educators saw that
Speaker 6: it was a really bad thing. Scripted curriculum takes away
Speaker 6: teacher autonomy and it also treats every child exactly the same.
Speaker 6: To me, those are the two most damning things about
Speaker 6: the movement. I'm a big advocate for teacher autonomy. Just
Speaker 6: a little side note, seventy to eighty percent of teachers
Speaker 6: of reading or women and we have as a nation
Speaker 6: decided that they have to be told what to do
Speaker 6: and they can't be professionals. And to me, there's a
Speaker 6: huge amount of misogyny in this whole movement, which is
Speaker 6: kind of the sign of the times. Also, these scripted
Speaker 6: curriculum programs have whitewashed the curriculum. We were starting to
Speaker 6: let students read text that they saw themselves in. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, girls and children of color, you know, and
Speaker 6: that was a good thing. We weren't doing a great job,
Speaker 6: but it was better. There's several studies out showing that
Speaker 6: these scripted structured literacy programs are going in the opposite direction.
Speaker 6: And you know, text are being kind of muted, and
Speaker 6: we're using the text simply to help children pronounce words.
Speaker 6: We're not worried about the content of it. We're not
Speaker 6: worried about students being engaged. There's a weird thing going
Speaker 6: on on social media where the science of people are
Speaker 6: saying that that kids don't have to like to read,
Speaker 6: and it's kind of weird. They're arguing that if they
Speaker 6: if they learn their phonics, they will they will start
Speaker 6: liking to read. And it's like this weird, I don't know,
Speaker 6: this weird antagonism toward having any choy in reading.
Speaker 7: And Jason was saying this a bit too, of getting
Speaker 7: caught so caught up with the data, Like the issue
Speaker 7: is that people can't and are not reading, Like the
Speaker 7: issue is not that the test scores aren't with it,
Speaker 7: you know, like yeah, yeah, sure, that's a byproduct of it.
Speaker 3: And like I understand wanting tests obviously to measure to
Speaker 3: measure stuff, but.
Speaker 7: We shouldn't be, okay, if the issues the test scores
Speaker 7: are bad, just trying to improve the test scores, right,
Speaker 7: Like the test scores should be reflective of reading, comprehension
Speaker 7: and you know all these other things, not just how
Speaker 7: well people can take the tests. People are really good
Speaker 7: at the test, but they still can't read or comprehend.
Speaker 7: It doesn't really matter what the scores say.
Speaker 3: I asked, what could we do to actually fix this,
Speaker 3: whether you want to call all the crisis or just
Speaker 3: a simple problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Jason also mentioned this where it's like we're talking
Speaker 3: about the schools and kids not wanting to read, but
Speaker 3: there's no model for people at home. And Paul got
Speaker 3: to this about the impacts of stuff outside of the
Speaker 3: classroom too.
Speaker 6: Really important research done on what impacts student learning, and
Speaker 6: it's over sixty percent outside of the school schools. I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I love educator, I'm an educator. I love schools. I
Speaker 6: love education. Schools do not change society. Schools reflect society.
Speaker 6: And we've got this kind of idealistic It was the
Speaker 6: Arnie Duncan nonsense. He was one of the worst Secretaries
Speaker 6: of Education ever. But you constantly talk about game changing.
Speaker 6: This is a game changer. There's kind of a joke
Speaker 6: about this. He said it all the time, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Schools just don't change. They reflect. So a lot of
Speaker 6: these reading scoreres and math scorers are not a reflection
Speaker 6: of the quality of learning or the quality of teaching.
Speaker 6: Their reflection of the negligence of our society. I mean,
Speaker 6: we talked about the Nate data. One fun fact about
Speaker 6: Nate that people ignore the highest scoring ski rules in
Speaker 6: the country. Department of Defense. Why those kids have mills,
Speaker 6: those kids have health care, those kids have a stable home.
Speaker 6: Way above Massachusetts is the highest scoring state. Department of
Speaker 6: Defense is way above them, I mean significantly above them.
Speaker 6: I've seen one article on that, like, we don't, you know,
Speaker 6: we want to talk about Mississippi as you know, defying
Speaker 6: the odds. We don't want to talk about Well, why
Speaker 6: don't we just change the odds. I'm for universal health care,
Speaker 6: but why don't we just have it for children at
Speaker 6: least our families? Like you know, we can start there.
Speaker 3: We need to put everyone in the military.
Speaker 2: Now I'm drafting everyone's a soldier.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: So here's my King of the World question. So he
Speaker 3: gets to write the New Worlds for education and to
Speaker 3: get these scores back up, what would he suggest inside
Speaker 3: and outside the classroom?
Speaker 6: It always strikes me as odd that we want children
Speaker 6: when they magically walk through the school door, or to
Speaker 6: pretend their lives don't exist. And I think this is
Speaker 6: a controversial thing to say, but you know, a kid
Speaker 6: is sick or hungry if they don't care about learning
Speaker 6: to read, I think they're making a really rational decision.
Speaker 6: Some colleagues and I several years ago we published a
Speaker 6: book called Social Context Reform. It was a reaction to
Speaker 6: the no excuses kind of idea that there's no excuse,
Speaker 6: we just have to do in school. Poverty is an excuse.
Speaker 3: Social context reform argues that we need social reform before
Speaker 3: worrying about education. So this would include things like universal
Speaker 3: health care, food security, job security, and housing security.
Speaker 6: Now in school, I think there are absolutely things we
Speaker 6: must do, especially at the early grades. I think we
Speaker 6: need smaller class size, particularly once we identify students who
Speaker 6: are struggling, they should be guaranteed two things, small class
Speaker 6: size and an experienced teacher. One of the dirty secrets
Speaker 6: of education is that the bad kids, the struggling kids,
Speaker 6: disproportionately or put in classrooms with beginning teachers. And there's
Speaker 6: kind of an unwritten rule that if you hang around
Speaker 6: as a teacher, they'll give you the good kids. And
Speaker 6: that's kind of criminal to me. I mean, that's just
Speaker 6: it's not a policy, it's just kind of a thing
Speaker 6: that happens. But if our struggling students were guaranteed smaller
Speaker 6: class size and experienced teachers, I think we would see
Speaker 6: some real growth. Now, the problem is when you measure
Speaker 6: teacher impact, it's almost not there. Teacher impact on student
Speaker 6: achievements about one to fourteen percent. It's very small. So
Speaker 6: the problem is it's very hard to measure teacher impact.
Speaker 6: So two things can be true. Teachers are incredibly important,
Speaker 6: and it's not going to show up in the data.
Speaker 6: So as long as we stay obsessed with test scorers,
Speaker 6: we're probably going to miss the good things we could
Speaker 6: be doing. For reading. We need to quit buying programs
Speaker 6: like I mean, we just need to stop it. I mean,
Speaker 6: constantly changing and buying. There's so much money, and I
Speaker 6: think there's a better approach. Oddly, I think we would
Speaker 6: be better off just buying children books. There's a lot
Speaker 6: of research that access to text in the home and
Speaker 6: community and school are strong, strongly correlated with high literacy.
Speaker 6: I've said many times we should start buying every child
Speaker 6: at birth, you know, twenty books a year. Let the
Speaker 6: kid pick ten, let the family pick ten, and then
Speaker 6: the system picks ten. Yeah, and you know, and by
Speaker 6: the time you graduated high school, just imagine everybody would
Speaker 6: have a library. Honestly, that's not that much money, and
Speaker 6: it's probably less money than we're spending on, you know,
Speaker 6: commercial programs.
Speaker 3: My last question was, are you considering a run for
Speaker 3: twenty twenty eight? He said no, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can start it right here well be in
Speaker 1: someone's administration at least.
Speaker 3: I what are you guys thoughts?
Speaker 2: My boy Paul said, we need to look ourselves in
Speaker 2: the mirror.
Speaker 3: Schools are reflection.
Speaker 2: Schools are a reflection, I like that of society. Society around,
Speaker 2: and they're not a projection and a reflection.
Speaker 7: But I think that's show true, is that if we
Speaker 7: as a society valued reading, the kids would be reading.
Speaker 7: Yeah they're not even if the even if the teacher
Speaker 7: didn't assign them books, they would be at home reading.
Speaker 7: If we said reading is as cool as watching tiktoks,
Speaker 7: and we really felt that as a society.
Speaker 2: The kids will be out.
Speaker 3: And that goes to Jason's point too about just like
Speaker 3: the arc of entertainment. And we kept adding these things,
Speaker 3: but you know they don't disappear. But like there's obviously
Speaker 3: benefits to reading a book, you know, just as leisure.
Speaker 3: And yeah, if we don't uphold that anywhere outside of
Speaker 3: clar for the learning, for the test even yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 3: like why would you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we need to make books sexy again in any
Speaker 7: form any fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, let me be clear, audio books. The issue
Speaker 2: is far beyond reading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a intellectual crisis, brain crisis.
Speaker 7: It's not cool to think about things now. It's not
Speaker 7: cool to do research. It's not cool to be an expert.
Speaker 7: It's not cool to know things now. It's cool to
Speaker 7: not know anything and say whatever you want.
Speaker 3: You need to think about things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there doesn't seem to be about like a desire
Speaker 1: to be curious about stuff.
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful way to say it.
Speaker 1: It's just like, and why would you be curious about anything?
Speaker 1: It's all like just shown to you on your phone,
Speaker 1: and you know, just like the the incentives are backwards.
Speaker 2: We stopped rewarding curiosity in this society.
Speaker 3: We need free thinkers.
Speaker 2: Not those times.
Speaker 1: Are asking questions.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, questions and answer them in an hour or
Speaker 7: less once a week perfectly on Wednesdays.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a few minutes there for some ads. I mean,
Speaker 3: in many ways, I think we're writing a book basically book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we write a book a week.
Speaker 1: Shoots the transcript out that's text. Just read the show boom,
Speaker 1: Yeah it give it a shot. Yeah, scroll down you can.
Speaker 1: There's probably a transcript button.
Speaker 3: If you would prefer to read our books every week.
Speaker 1: Who're coming out with the book every week?
Speaker 3: It's crazy publishing publishing as wild these days. No such
Speaker 3: thing as a production of Kaleidoscope content. Our executive producers
Speaker 3: are Kid Osborn and man Gesh hot Cadur. The show
Speaker 3: was created by Mandy Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devin Joseph Femen.
Speaker 3: Credits song by Manny, mixing by Steve Bone. Thank you
Speaker 3: Steve our guest this week. We're Kelsey, Khalaude Felter, Jason Reynolds,
Speaker 3: and Paul Thomas. Scroll down for links to their work,
Speaker 3: and go to our newsletter at No Such Thing dot
Speaker 3: Show for more, especially if you want to get deeper
Speaker 3: into the research Paul is discussing in the last bit
Speaker 3: of the episode. If you have feedback for us or
Speaker 3: a question, our email is Manny Noah Devin at gmail
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