Education Gadfly Show #797: Why debunked reading practices continue to spread

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Sandi Jacobs, Principal at EdCounsel and former Senior Education Program Specialist for Reading First at the U.S. Department of Education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss why reading programs based on debunked science persist in schools. Her answer: It’s complicated. Educators, in part, may struggle with the idea that they’ve been teaching something incorrectly. And strong, evidence-backed replacements can lack hefty marketing budgets. After this discussion, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines a study on how dual-language education affects math and reading outcomes.

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Recommended content:

• EdCounsel’s Twitter  content: @EdCounselDC.
• Recent media reports on poor-quality reading curricula:
  • EdWeek’s “New Curriculum Review Gives Failing Marks to Two Popular Reading Programs,”
  • Chalkbeat’s “Colorado cracks down on schools using weak reading curriculum. Advocates worry about backpedaling,”
  • APM Reports’s “Influential authors Fountas and Pinnell stand behind disproven reading theory.”
• The seminal 1999 report Sandi mentioned from the American Federation of Teachers: Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able To Do. It was updated and reissued in 2020.
• Fordham’s 2007 report on ineffective literacy programs: Whole-Language High Jinks.
• The study that Amber reviewed on the Research Minute: Andrew Bibler, “Dual Language Education and Student Achievement,” Journal of Education Finance and Policy (October 2021).

Feedback welcome!

Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at [email protected].