Whole Language High Jinks: How to tell when ‘scientifically-based reading Instruction’ isn’t

Tells Only Partial Truth

Report Misrepresents Research and Blatantly Promotes

Author’s Own Product

EAST LANSING, Mich. – A new Fordham Institute report

that purports to unmask whole-language reading instruction as “unscientific” is

more a promotion of commercial reading materials written by its author than an

unbiased report on effective reading instruction.

The report, Whole Language High Jinks: How to tell when

‘scientifically-based reading instruction’ isn’t by Louisa Moats, was

reviewed for the Think Twice think tank review project by Richard Allington, a

professor at the University of Tennessee, past president of the International

Reading Association and member of the Reading Hall of Fame.

Allington puts the Fordham report in the context of

longstanding debate over reading instruction.

“Over the past 60 years, the so-called reading wars have

pushed the nature of effective reading instruction into the political realm,”

Allington writes. “While those advocating whole language approaches were in the

ascendancy a couple decades ago, the phonics adherents have had the most

political success of late, often preventing teachers and schools of education

from keeping whole language approaches in their tool boxes.”

The Fordham report contends that supporters of

whole-language instruction have managed to thwart the advance of so-called

scientifically-based reading instruction. It asserts such scientific research

supports systematic phonics instruction. However, the report fails to provide

convincing research supporting this contention. Moats, the report’s author,

exaggerates the findings of research she does cite and incorrectly dismisses

approaches that are, in fact, well-supported by research, Allington finds.

“Perhaps most disturbingly,” Allington adds, Moats “touts

primarily commercial curriculum products distributed by her employer -- products

that have far fewer published studies of effectiveness than the products and

methods she disparages.” He notes that she specifically promotes products that

she herself authored.

Find the complete review by Richard Allington as well as a

link to the Fordham Institute report at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

About Think Twice

The Think Twice project provides the public, policy makers

and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank

publications. It is a collaboration of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory

at Arizona State University and the Education and the Public Interest Center at

the University of Colorado at Boulder and is funded by the Great Lakes Center

for Education Research and Practice.

The mission of

the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to identify,

develop, support, publish and widely disseminate empirically sound

research on education policy and practices designed to improve the quality

of public education for all students within the Great Lakes Region.

Visit the Great Lakes

Center website at: http://www.greatlakescenter.or g

Contact:
Richard Allington (865) 974-1920
(email) rallingt@utk.edu