https://youtu.be/dtXIk8npHhM
Susan Pendergrass speaks with Chad Aldeman, education policy researcher and founder of Read Not Guess, about Missouri’s early literacy crisis and why the legislature has struggled to address it. They discuss what it means for a fourth grader to be below basic in reading, why three-cueing may be harmful to early readers, the science of reading and what it actually prescribes, the case for third-grade retention policies, and more.
Learn more about Read Not Guess at www.readnotguess.com.
Episode Transcript
Susan Pendergrass (00:00):
Looking forward to this conversation with you, Chad Aldeman. I just want to give you a little background on why I want to talk to you today. Missouri just wrapped up its legislative session in late May. This is the second year in a row that we have tried to make some inroads into what I consider to be a crisis, which is that 42 percent of our fourth graders are below basic in reading. We have tried to force the state education agency, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, to improve how reading is taught and to create a system of guardrails around kids being promoted without knowing how to read, all of which have failed. What does it mean for a fourth grader to be below basic in reading? Given that more than four in ten Missouri fourth graders scored below basic, what does that mean?
Chad Aldeman (00:59):
Below basic is a very low level. It means that kids cannot read an unfamiliar passage and understand what it means. In fourth grade, maybe you’re not super worried about those kids, but you probably should be, because that is a key milestone. If you’re not reading in fourth grade, you’re really going to struggle with everything that comes next. You’re not going to be able to understand social studies and science. You may not be able to read owners’ manuals or instruction manuals when you’re trying to build things at your house. You’re really going to be dependent on other people interpreting words and language for you. YouTube is helpful, lots of things are helpful, but we’re still in a written culture, and there’s lots of information that’s written that if you can’t pass even the basic level you’re going to struggle with in life going forward.
Susan Pendergrass (02:02):
Yeah, so this is kind of the problem, which I consider to be basically a crisis. Forty-two percent of our kids are below basic. What we call it when we’re trying to fix it goes by a bunch of different names: early reading, early literacy, read to learn. But when my kids were little, about thirty years ago, I think it was called whole language, this language-rich environment where kids would just learn to read. But now there’s a thing called three-cueing. What is three-cueing? I assume it means that kids are supposed to look three different places for cues, but what specifically is it?
Chad Aldeman (02:37):
Three-cueing and whole language have a lot of similarities. They’re basically trying to get people to memorize words. Rather than sounding out, like my name is Chad, which is pretty phonetic, rather than understanding that the CH combination makes the ch sound, they want you to just memorize the picture in your head of what the word looks like. Really good readers do have a lot of memorized words. I don’t have to sound out my name. There are lots of words that my brain just goes to instantly because I’m so familiar with them. But taking what expert readers can do and using that as a method to teach kids is actually really harmful. Kids develop those skills by learning the core elements. The CH combination makes the ch sound, and they need to practice that when they’re learning to read. Over time they’ll just see it and recognize it quickly. English is quirky. English is not entirely phonetic, but it’s still quite phonetic, and phonics is still the building block of reading. There are cases when CH doesn’t make the ch sound, when it makes the hard C sound. Kids need to understand and recognize those as well. They need repetitions, and they need to understand what the normal rule is and what some of the exceptions are.
Susan Pendergrass (04:04):
So would three-cueing be considered part of the science of reading or not?
Chad Aldeman (04:08):
Three-cueing is not part of the science of reading. Three-cueing is saying, rather than teaching kids the building blocks of the language, have them guess at the words based on a picture they see. So there’s a picture of a horse, and they see a word, and they just guess horse. The text may actually say pony, and sometimes those differences really do matter.
Susan Pendergrass (04:29):
Ha.
Chad Aldeman (04:38):
The second cue is the first letter of the word, and the third is other context clues. So if it’s a story about horses, you might guess horse. And those cues are actually detrimental to learning how to read, to knowing what the words and letters actually translate into.
Susan Pendergrass (05:02):
Why? Why is it detrimental?
Chad Aldeman (05:04):
Because it leads to guessing. It might be harmless for a four-year-old to say pony when the word actually says horse. But as kids get older and start reading more complex texts, those types of mistakes really do matter. And if you haven’t learned the phonetic skills, you’re not going to be able to read a word like ribonucleic acid or something like that. When you start reading more complex words, all of a sudden you can’t break them down. Your mind doesn’t have the ability to understand how to break down a word that you’re not familiar with.
Susan Pendergrass (05:33):
Mm-hmm. So two years in a row at least, the legislature has tried to ban three-cueing so that teachers would not be allowed to use it. They punted a little bit and said it can’t be the first thing they use, but could still be a tool in their toolbox. They’ve gotten a lot of pushback. In Missouri, legislators are sometimes former teachers, sometimes married to a teacher, sometimes their best friend is a teacher. And they’ll just say, you know what, we’re a local control state, so we can’t tell these teachers what to do. When they’re in the moment in the classroom, they know best, and that’s how we roll in Missouri. But what I hear you saying is it can actually be harmful.
Chad Aldeman (06:39):
Yeah, and there actually is a science about how kids learn to read. It’s been well documented for a long time through empirical researchers looking at whether kids do better under method A or method B. What they found is that teaching kids the building blocks of reading, the phonetics, is more helpful, particularly for students who might struggle, or who are dyslexic, or have other language issues. If you teach the three-cueing strategies, you’re teaching them the wrong thing and leading them down a side road. It can lead to bad habit formation, which is then really hard to kick later on. The other thing that’s relevant here is that reading is somewhat sequential, and kids need a lot of practice in the early grades in order to be proficient readers. If you use the three-cueing tactics, you will not be giving them the building blocks they need to develop. And it’s a challenge to get kids back on track if they’re off. There’s all kinds of data about delays in reading, and kids who aren’t proficient by third grade will struggle in the short and long term. So it’s really important to catch those issues as early as possible in K through two.
Susan Pendergrass (08:14):
Well, on that note, another component to the legislation that’s been considered and that we have been supportive of is that if a child at third or fourth grade has demonstrated that they are substantially behind in learning to read, they should not be promoted to the next grade. What do you think about that policy?
Chad Aldeman (08:34):
Some people may hear that policy and think it’s punitive and it’s going to be bad for kids, but it’s not really about what happens at the end of third grade. I see that policy as more of a threat to the adults in that student’s life about making sure that doesn’t happen. In K through two, those students are being flagged and identified as being at risk of potentially being held back.
Susan Pendergrass (08:39):
Mean.
Chad Aldeman (09:04):
And they’re given interventions and supports so that they’re ready to take and pass the assessment in third grade. That’s really my read of the evidence. In the states that have these types of policies, kids who are flagged as needing more help get the help. That is the key: this sort of threat of being held back, and then the interventions and all the adult behaviors it changes. Teachers then know which kids need extra help. They then communicate to parents, hey, your child is behind and they need to catch up, and here’s what we’re going to do to help them. I wrote about this in Mississippi. They have learning plans, specific, tailored, individualized instructional plans for children who are at risk of being held back. And parents are brought into the conversation. It’s pretty scary that your child may be at risk of being held back, and here’s what we’re going to do in the interim to get them ready. That is the key for me. It’s not what happens in third grade. It’s all the stuff that happens before and what the adults can do to make sure kids are ready.
Susan Pendergrass (10:19):
Yeah, because if I understand it correctly, Mississippi has that policy, but they don’t actually retain that many kids.
Chad Aldeman (10:26):
Yeah, that’s right. In state after state, the states that have these types of policies, the number of kids who are ultimately retained is not that high. There are screens that are identified earlier in K through two, and then interventions are put in place. There are oftentimes some exceptions for students with severe disabilities or English learners who are newly arrived, and chances for retakes if there’s something about stress on the day or they go through a summer program. There are other ways to get students ready. It’s not just the third-grade cut point.
Susan Pendergrass (11:07):
Yeah, it seems like one of those situations, and I doubt it’s unique to Missouri, where people in charge of teaching young children to read feel threatened or feel like they’re being criticized, because we have a real problem with 42 percent of our kids being almost illiterate. And the adults are taking it personally, and therefore they’re resistant to any policy that would force the hand of these districts or teachers. And to me that’s just a shame.
Chad Aldeman (11:47):
Yes, I agree. I think part of it goes to the culture in education where every teacher is supposed to create their own idea and method for how to teach. We don’t really give teachers the building blocks of here’s a well-scripted curriculum, and if you follow this your kids are likely to be successful. Some of the highest-performing schools, school districts, and countries do a much better job of being clear that here’s a well-defined, articulated curriculum, and we’re going to support teachers to do it. There’s still the question of how it gets implemented, but the what is pretty well articulated. And this goes back to the science of reading idea: there is a science. It is evolving in the sense that there’s still more research being conducted and we’re still learning new things, but we know a fair amount about how kids learn to read. So teachers, schools, and teacher preparation programs should be equipping their teachers to use those things.
Susan Pendergrass (12:58):
So you have spent a lot of time studying and writing about this, and you decided to take a leap and start your own company?
Chad Aldeman (13:06):
Yes. I got interested in this because my own child was taught to read using three-cueing. He came home during the pandemic and I was oblivious. I kind of thought my son could read. We had been to school and celebrated his reading superpowers that the teachers had taught, and they were things like guessing at pictures, picture power.
Susan Pendergrass (13:26):
Yeah.
Chad Aldeman (13:33):
During the pandemic, he was a kindergartner and he came home, and we sent him up to his room to do silent independent reading. It turns out he was just guessing. He hadn’t been taught how to sound out words. After working with him, I came up with a program called Read Not Guess. It’s designed for parents to work with their kids, both to build early literacy building blocks like phonetic skills, and also as a way that they can spot early reading issues with their own children. It gives parents the tools to work with their kids, support them from home, and be an advocate by their side.
Susan Pendergrass (14:12):
And your son was in what’s considered to be one of the top school districts in the country, Fairfax County, Virginia.
Chad Aldeman (14:17):
Yeah, Fairfax County Public Schools. People move here for the schools, and yet we were using a balanced literacy three-cueing approach to teaching reading. To the district’s credit, partly because the state forced them to change, they have now moved to a more phonics-based approach and are using something called content knowledge building. So they’ve adopted a curriculum that’s also trying to build
Susan Pendergrass (14:22):
Yeah. Sure.
Chad Aldeman (14:47):
content knowledge along the way, which I’m supportive of. I’m sure there are people within the district who are upset, but the state said this is what we’re going to do, and so they’ve moved in that direction.
Susan Pendergrass (15:01):
You’re certainly not anti-teacher. You’ve been working on teacher issues for as long as I can remember, right?
Chad Aldeman (15:06):
No, I’m very pro-teacher. I’m pro-good policy. I’m pro-helping kids learn to read, and I think that’s one of the basic things that schools can do and that they should be doing.
Susan Pendergrass (15:08):
Yeah. Yeah. It really is frustrating to me that when something’s not going well in our state, we have 520 school districts, not county-based like Virginia’s, and it just feels like a throwaway line to say, well, we’re a local control state. As a matter of fact, somebody in our state education agency said out loud in a recorded meeting, it’s not our fault the kids can’t read, we’re local control. Everyone passes the buck and no one takes any responsibility. Some of them actively work against retaining third graders who can’t read or banning three-cueing. The last thing we were looking for was just that every student in the state would take essentially the same test with the same cutoff score so we could know consistently across districts which students are in that at-risk group so that we could identify them early. We got pushback on all of it. It’s baffling to me. We’re not trying to be mean to teachers. We’re trying to help little kids, because I see it ultimately impacting the Missouri workforce and everything else. We are graduating kids from high school who cannot really read.
Chad Aldeman (16:30):
Yeah, there’s a reason that the state created an education system in the first place, and the districts are entities of the state. They’re state standards, and so they should be teaching kids to those standards, and reading is a big essential building block of that. How far they get down into curricular choices is something that people can still debate, but the ultimate goal of teaching kids to read, and the argument that here are some methods that have been fundamentally disproven that we should as a state abandon, I think is a good and valid argument.
Susan Pendergrass (17:09):
Mississippi seemed to lead the way with this with the Mississippi Miracle, and then we have Louisiana and some other states. Do you see this spreading nationwide, this idea of forcing schools to use the science of reading?
Chad Aldeman (17:25):
Yeah. More states have science of reading laws, and they vary in their components. Last I saw it was 42 states. So Missouri is one of the last stragglers to not have one of these laws. The laws vary across the country in terms of how strict they are, what the state does versus what they put on districts, in terms of the third-grade retention policy versus state mandates on curriculum, whether they’re giving districts a menu of
Susan Pendergrass (17:37):
Right.
Chad Aldeman (17:56):
options or just saying they can’t use three-cueing. There are also other things around screening what happens for students in K through two, how much parents are notified, and what they’re given to help their children. All those things vary, but I think the most interesting point for Missouri is that most states have now adopted one of these laws and are pushing in this direction because they see the crisis as you’ve articulated it and the urgency for it. There’s still some important implementation work to get right if Missouri wants to see strong outcomes. Being focused on third-grade reading is very important, building it into accountability systems, building it into everything the state does, trying to simplify that and keeping it a priority. If the state is saying we don’t really care if it happens, then you’re not going to get outcomes. But if you focus on it and think about ways to drive it, there are levers that can be used.
Susan Pendergrass (19:03):
Yeah. Well, I hope we do it. Read Not Guess, where do folks find out more about that?
Chad Aldeman (19:10):
Read Not Guess is a website. It’s an email-based program. Parents can sign up for free at any time. There are three levels, starting with a beginner level, level one, then level two and level three. They’re all 30-day sequences. When parents sign up they receive
Susan Pendergrass (19:17):
Free, right?
Chad Aldeman (19:32):
a sequence of 30 emails for each of the levels. I also have one for slightly older kids who just need more practice, called a daily decodable program. There’s an app version of that program as well, or a workbook if parents want it in print form.
Susan Pendergrass (19:43):
Well, that’s great. Way to jump in and try to solve the problem yourself. I appreciate that. Thanks so much, Chad. Always great to talk to you. This was fairly narrow. We might need to have you come back and talk about school finance and teacher pipelines, but I’m going to reserve you for early literacy today. Thank you so much.
Chad Aldeman (19:52):
Thanks for having me.
Produced by Show-Me Opportunity
