{"id":707706,"date":"2023-04-21T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/?post_type=article&p=707706"},"modified":"2023-04-20T15:52:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T19:52:31","slug":"the-transformation-is-real-as-science-of-reading-takes-hold-in-n-c-schools","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/article\/the-transformation-is-real-as-science-of-reading-takes-hold-in-n-c-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Transformation is Real\u2019 as Science of Reading Takes Hold in N.C. Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
Perquimans Central Elementary is a school for pre-kindergarten through second grade in North Carolina\u2019s rural northeast. Years ago, when Melissa Fields served as principal there, she adopted Lucy Calkins\u2019s Units of Study, a \u201cbalanced literacy\u201d curriculum for teaching reading.<\/p>\n
Units of Study is rooted in a whole-language approach to literacy instruction. The version Perquimans used recently received low marks<\/a> from curriculum evaluators, and many of its practices \u2013 such as cueing readers to look at pictures to guess at words \u2013 lack evidence that they work for most students.<\/p>\n When Fields was principal, she said, it seemed to work for many young learners. And for those still struggling, Fields tried to offer more intensive support by using grant money to train six teachers in Reading Recovery, an intervention also questioned<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n In kindergartners, first-graders, and second-graders, Fields said, it was hard to see the drawbacks of this approach.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did not have enough skills to sustain that [reading growth],\u201d Fields said. \u201cThey were focusing so much on reading for meaning with balanced literacy, that they had not really gotten those decoding skills strong enough. So when the picture cues went away and the text became more complex, we saw that these kids we thought were readers in the primary grades couldn’t sustain that as they got older.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the \u201cwhy\u201d behind North Carolina\u2019s strong pivot away from balanced literacy and whole language instruction. After decades of steadily disappointing scores in reading proficiency, the state turned to legislation to bar programs and practices rooted in whole language.<\/p>\n