Hanford exposes soft bigotry in schools
If you haven't listened to or read the latest APM Report from Emily Hanford, this is really a must. A multifaceted look at the importance of oral language, background knowledge, and effective instruction for reading comprehension, Hanford’s report sheds light on the cruel intersections and interactions between race, family income, poverty, and educational failure.
Opening this documentary, Hanford creates a vivid picture of the mix of bleakness and hope for young people in youth justice, who are trying to get an education even at this late stage. This episode resonated strongly with me, as it is the setting of my previous research and current work.
The families of the young people in prison share their experiences of always knowing there was something wrong with their child’s learning, but getting nowhere. Hanford shares multiple stories of families trying to advocate for their children, but never getting the help they needed—not until they reached the justice system. In prison, of all places, remedial support for reading can be finally provided.
Nobody has dyslexia in a poor school?!
In one of the more shocking revelations, Hanford reveals that children of colour are actively diverted from special education services in some parts of the US, as learning disabilities are deemed incompatible with children from low income families.
The families of young people in prison, of course wonder if their child had received this support in primary school, would their life look dramatically different now. This is a question I always ask myself when working with adolescents with learning difficulties in custody. The idea that children with backgrounds of trauma or poverty have their learning difficulties explained away as part of their “history”, illuminates the reasons why so many of my students at Parkville College, did not get the help they needed at school.
So much could have been done. But it wasn’t. Could it have made the difference?
Making the poor poorer
SOURCE: The National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2019, as cited in Hanford, 2020.
Building upon her previous coverage of the lack of awareness of the Science of Reading in Teachers’ Colleges, and the clinging to outmoded beliefs like the three-cueing view of reading, Hanford skilfully explores the costs of ineffective practices.
These costs are felt particularly by those who are already underserved by their schools, including families with low income, cultural and linguistic diversity, and/or families of colour.
Compared to 50% of white children who are at or below basic proficiencies in reading at Grade 4 (still shocking), Black, American Indian, and Hispanic Americans have 75% at or below this benchmark! What’s more, in some parts of the US, more than 90% of the youth justice population are made up by black and hispanic youths.
Reading difficulties don’t disappear after the early years of school. How reading is taught currently creates a situation where these difficulties only get worse.
A useful concept to explain how these gaps become this wide is what’s known as “Matthew” effects, where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Those who enter school with foundation skills make steady progress. But for those who arrived with few of these foundational skills, as each year passes, they fall further, and further behind.
As many professionals working in educational sectors today would note, reading difficulties don’t disappear after the early years of school. How reading is taught currently creates a situation where these difficulties only get worse.
Matthew Effects in Reading. The rich get richer; the poor get poorer.
Source: Children Learning Reading Review
Why does this happen?
The young people in Hanford’s documentary recall that learning to read was almost impossible. They tried to memorise words and store them like pictures. But of course this strategy failed them very quickly.
The only way to become a proficient reader is to master the code: that is you need to automatically recognise the building blocks of words, which are sound-letter patterns (graphemes), and blend these together to decode words. Not every child can master this by themselves.
They need to be taught how to do this.
When children miss out on effective instruction in reading:
some do just as well;
others do somewhat worse; and
others miss the reading boat altogether.
This is why science of reading advocates argue that systematic synthetic phonics teaching is “helpful for all children, harmful for none, and crucial for some” (Snow & Juel, 2005).
The Ladder of Reading. Source: Nancy Young
Like my students at Parkville College, these young people in prison tried hard to learn how to read. They didn’t want to “end up on the streets”.
But the dominant methods for teaching reading do not set underserved children up for success. While white kids from families with money can bypass and compensate for poor instruction, marginalised families cannot. This is why effective literacy instruction is an equity issue.
While white kids from families with money can bypass and compensate for poor instruction, marginalised families cannot.
This is why effective literacy instruction is an equity issue.
Enter the soft bigotry — “Poverty is to blame”
Another key issue tackled by Hanford is the role of poverty in “explaining” differences in reading outcomes. Hanford notes that in recent NAEP reports, 86% of low income families were on the low benchmark for reading. But does poverty explain this difference? Are poor kids just not destined to be strong readers?
Of course not!
This myth, unfortunately, is one of the most prolific falsehoods promulgated within the “status quo” literacy paradigm.
When you are part of a system that sees more than half of students barely meeting basic standards in literacy, you have to tell yourself something to justify what you are seeing …
Too many educators, even today, tell themselves that kids are struggling because of poverty:
They might say: ‘Underserved families do not have to time to read to their children; they don’t have enough books at home. That is why they don’t do well.’
There couldn’t be a more cruel misrepresentation.
Yes poverty contributes to risk for educational difficulties. Hanford explores how vocabulary, background knowledge, and academic-like language are all important for reading comprehension, and are more likely to be impacted in students from low income families, and families of colour.
However, it is not the case that poverty determines reading failure.
Teachers make the difference
On the contrary, it is what the teacher does which makes the difference for children from underserved communities. When educators look to the circumstance of the family to explain reading and writing problems, it is somewhat understandable. Teaching children from underserved communities offers unique opportunities, and challenges…
However, if poverty is used as the sole explanation for educational failure at a systemic level this is tantamount to the soft bigotry of low expectations. By ignoring the role of instructional decisions in the fates of at-risk students, our education system condemns struggling readers to lives unfulfilled, potentials untapped.
By ignoring the role of instructional decisions in the fates of at-risk students, our education systems condemn struggling readers to … lives unfulfilled, potentials untapped.
Set children up for success
At a minimum, all schools require the following, to ensure literacy success of all students:
ensuring all children can recognise words quickly, effortlessly, and fluently — using the explicit teaching of phonemic awareness and systematic synthetic phonics
providing explicit instruction in vocabulary and content knowledge needed to understand complex texts (both fiction and nonfiction)
helping children experience success in reading comprehension (this experience of success is where the joy of reading really originates!)
explicitly and sequentially teaching spelling and writing (from sound, to sentence, to soliloquy)
Effective instruction is an equity issue
When effective instruction is provided, ALL children succeed and learn how to read and write. That’s why forward thinking teachers and educators believe that getting instruction right is about educational equity and social justice.
Think Forward Educators is a community of teachers, parents, specialists, researchers, and advocates committed to ensuring all children succeed. All are welcome to join our movement.
Now two thousand strong, Think Forward Educators represents a growing movement of educators ready to question status quo practices.
I am proud to be part of a Community of Educators ready to empower all schools to promote and foster best practice, so that no child misses their chance to succeed at school.
There’s so much more to say about this piece of journalism, and the research and lived experiences upon which it touches. But I’ll leave you in the good hands of this determined reporter. While we may have known about these issues for decades, no one has articulated these complex issues as elegantly, and compellingly as Emily Hanford.
Read on, right here.
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