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computer. And it should be good. It should be recording right now. So, yeah, as I was telling

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Dave, I said, welcome, you know, I'm tutoring some kids online and every kid is different.

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What works with one? I think, okay, I'll do that same winning formula with my other one. And I have

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to change it up every time. Some like to do their writing before reading, some reading, you know,

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every kid is different. And that's why these one size fits all programs. Why some of us in the

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meeting based community just don't appreciate it because teachers think they have to implement them

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with fidelity, meaning you have to read the directions and follow the directions just as.

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And good teachers take these things and they implement them, but yet they adopt and adapt

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them based on the needs of their students. And that's why we must empower teachers, school

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districts and schools that are trying to force teachers to do the curriculum as written are

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really practicing educational malpractice. So everything has to be adopted and adapted.

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Sorry, I was off on attention, David. No, no, no, you're just doing your stick and I get

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my stick is who I am. I live. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, something's got to pay the rent there,

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right? So I get that. Yeah, how much money do I make? And listen, I agree with,

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when I talk with teachers, I tell them the most important thing they can bring to teaching is

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their own learning, right? They've got to be constantly learning to modulate what they're

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doing in an adaptive response to what the learners are doing. That said, you know, there's

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prerequisites, right? So if somebody somebody wants to be a good quarterback or a good whatever,

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you know, play some sports position, it's not like they're going to just throw them out there

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without doing certain prerequisite things to build them up to being proximately ready for

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that challenge. So, you know, there's an argument, you know, with respect to reading where there

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are things that it's helpful to kind of exercise, I mean, knowing the names of the letters of the

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alphabet, right? There are certain abstract building block things that are necessary prerequisites.

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After that, yeah, I agree with you, everything should be adaptive.

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And I'm glad you talked about that teacher knowledge and teacher preparation. You know,

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the difference between experts and novices is having that body of knowledge and expert teachers,

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this isn't me, but not being roboticized by it. Well, there's four kind of knowledge. You have

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to have knowledge of learners and learning how humans learn. You have to have pedagogical knowledge,

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which is general teaching strategies, pedagogical content knowledge, which is strategies for the

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content areas, math, methods, reading, method science methods, and you have to have knowledge

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of content. Those are the four types of knowledge. And experts have more knowledge,

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novices have less of it. We've got three semesters in a teacher preparation program,

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plus student teaching. There's absolutely no way we can create even close to an expert teacher.

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And it's silly to think that way. They come into us with little knowledge, but they leave with

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shallow and disjointed bits of knowledge. They're ready to start the journey, but they are far from

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experts. And I think people think you can come from three semesters of a teacher preparation

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program and be a finished teaching product. Was that a tangent? Yeah, you know, I know,

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no, I mean, I first of all, I'm kind of good with going where we're going. I think our meta intent

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today was to get into science in general and the science of reading in particular. And this is a

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decent take off ramp to get into those spaces. I would say with respect to teaching, I had

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the honor and pleasure to interview some people who studied teachers on a macro level,

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from people at the Hoover Institute, like Hannah Schaik, to Martin Haberman, who runs the Haberman

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Institute and up in your neck of the woods, I think, or at least he did, and Richard Allington

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before being involved in whole language, he spent or parallel to his involvement in whole

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language related to enterprises. He was very focused on understanding teacher behavior. And

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what was most amazing to me about the convergence of all of those studies about what makes effective

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teaching was that it was not necessarily how much they were paid, it was not necessarily how much

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they knew was not so much the credentials they had, it was not necessarily how touchy-feely they

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were and how good they made people feel, how good they made the students feel, it was not their warm

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demeanor, it was their invitation to turn taking participation so that they weren't just cramming

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something, they were putting forth something and then seeing what the learner brought back and

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constantly encouraging the learner to inform them about what to be doing. So, which directly lines

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up with what was the most effective thing. If you look at the, I mentioned Hart Risley worked

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the last time, the studies of the early language patterns of children coming out of different

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kinds of families from tasseturn to more talkative. And in those conversation spaces, what they found

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was is that the parents that engaged children in the most term-taking, elaborative conversations

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were the ones that were building children's kind of vocabulary and verbal musculature, so to speak,

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and predicted their later success with reading. So, in all these cases, teachers and parents,

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it's not so much what they know, it's not so much following some script, it's about how

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they're live on the edge themselves learning to differentiate what they're doing. So, they still

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got to bring what you're talking about, but they can't bring it statically or mechanically or

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robotically. So, what you talked about was general pedagogical knowledge, general teaching strategies,

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and knowledge of learners and learning. As informing what I described, that's not what I

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described. Those are things that are in the background informing what I'm describing, but

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they're not. Well, probably you have to have that knowledge. You have to have that knowledge to be

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an expert teacher, and that's part of it. And, you know, reading the research on teacher education,

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colleges of education matter, comparing the fast-track teacher programs, we'll just throw

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them in there and see who sticks, that teachers who have gone through teacher preparation programs

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have better success with students as measured by achievement tests, and are rated as better teachers.

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Linda Darling-Hammond did this research by their supervisors when compared larger sample size.

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This idea that anyone can teach, we'll just throw them into the classroom. How would you like your

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kid having a teacher who's learning on the job? That's not fair to our kids. We need well-prepared

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expert teachers. I'd much rather have them learning on the job than being a robot of what they've been

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taught. No, I want both. I want somebody who's well versed in the field that they're going to be

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interacting with the children with, and that that's in the background, not the foreground,

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that's informing how they're learning to adapt that to the students. And I don't think-

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If they're following that robotically, then they should be replaced.

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And I don't think anyone wants a robot except maybe the science of reading people.

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We want teachers with background knowledge to apply what's in front of them. Nobody wants a

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robot, absolutely not, but you have to have a teacher toolbox full of research-based strategies.

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That's the best way to teach reading.

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Well, research-based strategy seems like a good segue to get into science.

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Oh, good one. Yes. Master of the segue. Yeah, well, so what is science? What is reading science?

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What is knowledge? Yeah, let's start. I think let's take some time with science because on the one hand,

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I think Einstein said with respect to the rational mind in general, and I think

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referring to science as well, that it's a fantastic slave and it's a terrible master,

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you know, that science is the way that we fill in the paradigms, but it's rarely the way that we

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create them. So let's just let you get started with where you wanted to go with science and then

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I will- Well, in general, and probably when you look at the social sciences and educational science

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specifically, there's often a different paradigm. And sometimes people coming from the hard sciences,

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when you only know the experimental model, they tend to think, well, that is the model that must

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be used in all of reality. When in essence, science at its basic is asking a question,

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using data to answer the question. That's what science is at its basic level. And science is a

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verb, it's a process to science. Yeah, I mean, science is a learning modality. And it's a consensual

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collective learning modality, consensual and collective in the sense that in order for it to

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have any meaning outside of the person that's doing it, it has to adhere to and conform with

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certain accepted standards of what constitutes good evidence, what constitutes good practice, right?

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So there's a series of conventions that are associated with science and any one particular

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discipline. Inside of that, it's a learning modality. It's a way of learning that's consensualizable,

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you might say. Way of understanding the world around us. And methods, methods of science are

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the systematic processes we use. And you are right, they are conferred by the field. And science,

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and it's part of research. And the thing that separates science and research from my thinkisms

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and data is peer review, blind peer review. So I often say this. Which doesn't necessarily make

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anything right. It just makes things consensualize. As I was saying, research is not research,

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unless and until it has been subjected to blind peer review. There's no such thing as a perfect

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objective science. It is simply one more filter. But without that filter, it doesn't even get in

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the conversation. So blind peer review, published in academic journals, no, there's no such thing

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as the perfect article. Science does not prove. Science supports a hypothesis. But it's ever

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evolving. So you can never say it has proven once in for all that. At one time, gravity, you know,

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the theory of gravity, we get into theories, but you know, that has been changed based on data,

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but that has been changed. Yeah. Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and there's current

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thinking that changes even that. So yeah, for sure. And this brings up an important point,

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how science changes, and the resistance to change within science. I interviewed a guy who was the

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head of the Stanford Free Press. He was a geologist, friend of Stephen J. Gould, if you know that

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field in the kind of punctuated equilibrium of evolution theories. Anyway, he interviewed 600

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geologists just before the tectonic plate revolution changed the geological understanding

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of the planet. And then he interviewed them after. And if you compare it, the 600 scientists before

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the plate, the tectonic plate revolution in geology all said that it was never going to be that way.

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He's got 600, the transcripts. I mean, it's an amazing body of work. It's a historian of science.

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They were all against this theory. And then once it was adopted, 10 years later, we went back to

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interview them, and they had all said, well, that's what we were all about all the way, all in the

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beginning. This story goes on and on. There's a big famous movie character coming out right now,

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Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is another example of what I call paradigm inertia in science,

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just like I just described with geology. In the case of Oppenheimer, one of his students at Caltech

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that was responsible for a major theoretical component of the atom bomb by a physicist by the

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name of David Bohm. For a number of reasons, Bohm wrote the textbook that would become the

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standard textbook for quantum mechanics in colleges throughout the world. Became a friend of Einstein.

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He was Einstein's dialogue partner, Einstein's spiritual son by Einstein's recollection,

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went on to become the Dalai Lama science teacher, right? So he was all over the place,

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as a giant of a physicist. At one point in time, he proposed an alternative theory for quantum

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mechanics, right? One that's just now the world's catching up to. And at the time, Oppenheimer calls

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a conference of the world's leading physicists without inviting this guy, Bohm, to it and says,

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listen, we're going to do everything we can to disprove him. And if we can't disprove him,

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we're going to all agree to ignore him. And they did. And the same thing goes on. If you study the

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history of nuclear reactors and how we got into the mess as we did, the same kind of paradigm

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inertia paralyzes science, just like it does our individual psychology. So science is an instrument

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that can be trusted when it's looking inside of a space that we kind of can agree on. But it's not

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very good at seeing outside of its box. And there's just the history of science is full of examples

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of this paradigm inertia, which is at the heart of what's going on in the reading wars and in the

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sciences of today. So I'm glad you made that segue. You know, there is no reading wars, by the way.

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Science is used to create research and a research study becomes a data dot and at this dot to dot

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picture called a theory. A theory is the way to explain a set of facts and the facts are created

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by research. You have a whole bunch of dots out there and different theories explain different

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data dots differently. That's why you can have two sets of research based theories, both explaining

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the same thing differently. Theories are either robust or weak. Now, people become data resistant

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when they cling too tightly to a particular theory. And that's what I was just describing,

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what I call paradigm inertia. In reading terms, that's what happens with the science of reading

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who are clinging to this phonological processing model, this simple view of reading this bottom

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up theory. And just like the people you mentioned, data or people that do not conform to that theory

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are called COOX or it is that's not valid, you know, it becomes data resistant, the data is ignored.

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That is very hyper specific. I think it's paradigm. It's the whole paradigm because the

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paradigm is what interprets the data. You can take the data and look at it from this lens or

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look at it from this lens. So the paradigm creates a frame of reference for the interpretation of

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data inside the mental model sets within that paradigm. And that's where the problem lies,

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not in the data. I mean, the science of reading people would say the exact same thing about

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you guys, your side of the equation. You know, I differentiate between a paradigm in a theory.

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A paradigm is a general way the field perceives. A theory is a way to explain a set of facts and

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understand phenomena. Now, when I do get in discussions, try to with science of reading

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people and ask what I got wrong. I usually get a lot of name calling and pejoratives without

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actually addressing the facts. And that is what is frustrating for me. I can point specifically

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to research data that is ignored by the simple view of reading those that cling tightly like pigs

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at their mother's teat to this theory without letting go. Miscue analysis, eye movement research,

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these sorts of things, priming studies and cognitive science, these all provide data

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for an interactive that supports an interactive theory of reading that's what's in the head

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interacts with what's on the page. Sure, I don't think anybody argues with that.

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Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The bottom up as you just stated that that that that that I mean, reading

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is not a passive process. It's an interactive process. The brain is involved in constructing

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the meaning. There's no question about that. Absolutely. You and I agree on that.

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But they agree on it too. They just agree. They just their difference with you is in what is the

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what is informing the construction of meaning, whether or not it's internal to the word working

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out the word or to what degree is the word understanding the word, recognizing the word,

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identifying the word, getting the meaning of the word, popping the word, whatever word you want

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to use for that process. Do you go extraneous to the word to get information that informs it?

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That's the difference, not whether or not there's an interactive process, whether or not the

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interactive process is in decoding, differentiating, recognizing the word from the word or recognizing

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the word from its surrounds and from its position in the flow. That's what's the difference.

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This is a good thing that you brought up, Dave, you know, really, if we can David, I'm sorry,

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do I, Dave or David? I don't care. Okay, I can call you whatever. You can call me whatever.

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Okay, I'll be fine. It'll be I'll put it in a badge here called he called me.

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Okay, I don't care. Okay, I really like how you started to differentiate between, you know,

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what are the differences? And yeah, that's why we're here, right? That is why we're here. And

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it's not necessarily, I think you and I agree on many things, but it becomes the level of the word.

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You have to identify the word before meaning is created. That's more science of reading stuff.

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And people with an interactive meeting base says they sometimes you don't have to know what the

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word is. As a matter of fact, you actually skip over 60% of the words that you're using top down

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information more than bottom up. Doesn't mean that letters are important, but brain research shows

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there is 10 times more information flowing from the cortex down in the thalamus up during the act

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of reading. Yeah, look, I mean, as you know, I mentioned I spent quite a bit of time with Keith

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Rainer. I spent a lot of time with the neuroscientists and cognitive scientists that are behind the

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science of reading that are the kind of archetypal godfathers of what became today's science of

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reading. And they would differ with this. I mean, for example, with the eye movement stuff, Keith

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Rainer would say, you can watch the eyes and infer the processing. And there's no question about it

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that the eyes are stuttering when they encounter an unfamiliar word that the more difficult the word

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is, not in terms of some abstract understanding of what makes a word difficult, but the actual

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experience of it being difficult for the reader themselves causes a bog in attention that disrupts

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the whole process and that that's directly related to the difficulty of recognizing a word. And that

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they're doing this across not only isolated words, which we've had that conversation before, but

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across the flow of sentences and paragraphs and larger bodies of text and then meta analyzing that.

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So I think their perspective would be that, yes, there's no question that what you've read

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is informing is particularly when you come to homophones and other words where there's

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possible multiple meanings that could come out of the word even after you recognize it,

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that the flow of meaning is definitely informing how you're experiencing the words that you're

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recognizing. But that recognition itself is fundamentally tied to working out recognition

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from the words rather than backfilling it or guessing it or inferring what it must be based

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on extraneous to the word information. That's where I think the argument is.

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And Keith Reiner says, what's in the head is directing the eyes. That's what Reiner says.

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What is in the head is directing eye movements, not what's on.

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Yeah, and the eye movements are stopping and stuttering according to the complexity

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or the difficulty that the brain is having in recognizing a word.

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Absolutely. The sight words, the function words like in the of are skipped over the content words

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that are more difficult are fixated more. Absolutely.

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And depending upon their difficulty and recognition, that's where the gradient is.

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That's where the problems. That's where the bottleneck to fluid processing is.

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And here I would go to research by Stephen Koser who says, you know,

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the length of the word has nothing to do with.

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I agree with that.

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Yeah. When I said difficulty, I was careful to clarify that what I meant by difficulty was not

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an abstract description of its difficulty, like by word length, etc., but the actual experience

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of difficulty by that particular reader. So perhaps unfamiliarity with the word or letter

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patterns. Now I used unfamiliarity before and we got into all kinds of about that, right?

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Whether it was identification or recognition. Whatever words you want to use, the time when

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the word gets into the flow, into the stream, right? Whatever, however we want to describe that,

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the various layers of that. And my understanding is that, yes, there's certainly all kinds of

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sight words that is particularly even a beginning reader picks up on and they're blowing through

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those fast. It's the, there's words that, that the bottleneck to processing, the bottleneck that's

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causing the stutter, that's causing it to be frustrating, that's causing it to be build up

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to shaming out all the rest of that stuff. The bottleneck to proceeding progressively into

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becoming a better reader is stuttering and stumbling on unfamiliar words, on words that are

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difficult to recognize. That that's what I understand the consensus is amongst the science of reading

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scientists from a cognitive neuroscience and from an eye movement study point of view. Well,

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it's interesting. I read the same research and get different interpretations of that research,

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even when I read. There we go to paradigms. That's what I was saying a few steps back. Yeah, but,

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you know, the idea, this is why getting back to the what happens in preschool, kindergarten, first

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grade. This is why there are some sight words like in the, and you have to recognize on site.

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That's why they're called sight words. And you should leave kindergarten having about 40 sight

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words that you know. There are some words that you recognize patterns. If we focus only on

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phonics, if we over-phonicize now, everyone believes in phonics, but if that's all we do,

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that's what's crazy. Don't put me in the everyone camp. I don't believe in it at all. I think it's

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a bastardized patch overlaid on a messed up orthography that just happens to have gotten

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traction because of the arguments that have gone on in the reading wars that you don't think are

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reading wars. If people overemphasize phonics that creates the bottleneck, and I can give you a hint,

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and this is why we do a lot of different types of activities. So that we're fully using the brain

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I think I had a young girl who would stop and spend about 10 seconds going letter by letter.

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And when I told her, it would take 10 seconds, when I said, well, just try saying blank and

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moving on, it would take her two seconds. She'd get the word and she came back. That freed up

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that bottleneck. That doesn't mean you don't use phonics, but it means you help students

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incorporate all parts of their brain. Another girl said, young lady, third grader, she called me Dr.

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Hay, you're magic because now the word just pops into my head. Well, she'd been struggling with

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phonics and she wasn't good at that. And the trouble is, and this is from the National Reading Panel

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Report that says, after first grade, if you're a struggling reader, phonics has limited impact.

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But what do we do with struggling readers? We give them more phonics so they can be not good

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at what they're not good at even more. Look, look, look, I'm like, I'm, if you've been tracking me,

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first of all, we're starting to recycle on things we've talked about before, which is okay.

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Thank you. Let me, all right. One, two, I think that all of these strategies to try to get a word

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to pop, whether they're phonics, or they're searching around the word for extraneous to the word

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cues and information to inform recognition, or it's, you know, interpreting from a picture,

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all of these extraneous to the word and internal to the word strategies for recognizing a word

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are only necessary because the orthography is not transparent. And that they're all

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bastardized adaptations to work around the fact that we've got a fundamentally messed up code.

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I don't think we're going to change the code, David, unless you're more powerful than I think you are.

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Yeah, some day, I would guess it'll probably take another decade or so. But yes, it'll be just

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insane that we ever had these kind of conversations. Here's the thing, you know,

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is there some research that you can point me to? And there may be, I don't know. That says,

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children in a rules based orthography learn to read faster and are further ahead at fourth,

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fifth grade than people. Yeah, I'll send you stuff. Martina Caravola is probably the international

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leader in, she's in Scotland, I think, on orthographic depth hypothesis studies and research.

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But I cited before and you kind of blew it off and I didn't challenge you on the blow it off part.

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I didn't blow it off. I said, the thing about the Italians that kids and Italians can read

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and learn to read in three months and it takes English students two to three years. So why that

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big magnitude of difference? And he and other neuroscientists would say, well, it's the complexity

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of the orthography. I didn't blow you off. I said, it may be, it sounds logically, but in the world

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of academia, we don't come to conclusions based on I thinkisms, based on studies. But this is why

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I hesitated coming to a conclusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, blow it off was a too strong a word.

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You're right. But you just basically said, look, I don't know about that research. So I let it go

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at that point. I'm just saying there's plenty of research out there that does show from multitude

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of vectors that when the when the orthography is transparent, right, that the least the kind

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of reading problems that our kids suffer with don't don't exist. Other problems may exist,

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depending on the language's other levels of ambiguity, but it's not at the word recognition

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that there's no word recognition bottleneck in the same way. And that gets back to the bigger point

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of what is science, what is knowledge, how many people have said to me the research says,

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sciences studies, I understand. It's like, it's like Bible interpretation, especially these days.

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Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I'm one of my goals is to teach people how to be responsible consumers

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of educational research. Because when someone just blurts out, science says research says

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whole language has been debunked. That's my favorite one. Oh, everyone knows that. Oh, research

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shows. Okay. I'm always looking at research. Yeah. Like I said, like I said, I agree with you on that

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and I apply it to what you're saying, just as much as I apply it to the other side, right? I mean,

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as far as I'm concerned, you're all extruding your paradigms in different ways, right? But you're,

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you see the world through a particular set of mental models and that interprets, you know,

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how you see. Speaking of research, though, one of the things you brought up that I think would be

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an interesting question. You think that they going back to Keith Rayner and the eye movement studies

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and how they relate to interpreting where the bottleneck in processing is for a beginning reader,

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you're saying, well, they're over-fonetized. They're trying to use phonics too much. And

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that's what's causing the stutter. Well, has anybody put through that kind of eye movement

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studies a comparison between the students that were taught the way you're talking about and

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students that were taught in a more phonic science of reading thing that were kind of

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otherwise peers and then put through the same process of eye movement, observation, and studies

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of where their attentional bogs were. And therein lies the difficulty of educational research.

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You have to have number one, it's hard to find equal sample sizes, teachers that do this, comparative

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populations. It is very tough to do. And that's why we have to look at the research carefully.

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There are very few comparisons of a meaning-based approach versus a bottom-up approach.

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What often happens, let me think that's not the answer.

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That was a no, I guess. There isn't any of that research.

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Have I read? If I have it slip my mind, I do remember years back comparing one to the other.

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And a whole language approach, and I use meaning-based now, showed superior. But

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all this stuff has to be looked at in context. When you say more effective, more effective for

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what? For who? How much? I was particularly looking at, again, Keith Rayner's work and it

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lined up with cognitive and neuroscience and other kinds of studies that I've been exposed to,

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or that I've paid attention to, basically said, look, if we watch the stream of a reader's mind

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and their attention over the course of a sentence or two or a paragraph or two, and we looked at

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what their eyes are doing and what that reveals about what their attention is doing,

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then we can see that when it is the encountering of difficult words, not difficult by any abstract

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external measure, but difficult as experienced by the person doing the reading, when they hit

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difficult words, that's when their attention busts down and their process busts down or gets

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less efficient. So what I'm saying is that have you been able to put in people trained in phonics,

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early kids, young but trained in phonics versus the whole methods and seen whether or not there's

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a difference at the level I just described? Meeting based. And I would have to go back and look at

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research to see if I can find that. And it's very difficult to do good research. Okay, well,

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because I bring it up because you said 10 minutes ago, five minutes ago or whatever it was, that

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the reason that the Keith Ranner study was showing this bog happening in relation to the

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difficulty of words was because those readers were trained to use phonics to work out those words.

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Oh, over. So how you couldn't you couldn't possibly know that unless you also had the

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counter example, right? Yes, I can go back to that. But I was I got a lot of my information from the

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National Reading Panel report that said that very thing that students that phonics is becomes less

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effective with struggling readers after first grade too much. Yeah, I think it becomes I

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yeah, I totally agree with that. I the National Reading Model to multiple reasons. Yeah, balanced

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approach, a balanced approach to reading instruction.

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Yeah, I don't know. I spent six or eight hours with Shanahan.

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And I wouldn't have said that he was pro balanced.

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And I'm quoting and he is one person but I'm quoting to you exactly from the National Reading

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Panel report. It said it's phonics should be part of a balanced reading program unquote.

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Yeah. Inside the paradigms. I don't disagree with that. I don't disagree with that.

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That's quite a mug you got there, man. That's a big one. And it's not a paradigm difference.

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It's is I'm adhering to a theory. My theory, the interactive theory or neurocognitive theory

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is how I interpret the data, the experience, what reading is. And I happen to think a neurocognitive

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theory is a robust theory explains a lot more stuff than a top down or a simple view of it.

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No, you guys share the same paradigm at a level that's different than me, right? You share the

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paradigm that that the code is immutable fixed object that we've got to train brains to work with.

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Right? I'm more comfortable with theory rather than paradigm because paradigm really is a bigger

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construct. Paradigm really has to do with the whole field and the way of seeing reality.

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I'm more comfortable with the world of theory. Theory is a look that's that's semantics. I'll

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go along with that. I would I think I think if you I assume you've read Thomas Kuhn's

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structure of scientific revolutions definition to paradigm. So it's a superset that organizes

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the perception of theories, right? So you're so for example, you have a different theory about

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reading than the science of reading. Yeah. Many advocates, most advocates, I would say yes.

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Okay. And I'm saying that that even though you guys have really different theories at one level,

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you're inside the same paradigm with respect to the orthography. Tell me more about respect to

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orthography, that you have to have some working knowledge of orthography.

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Well, that the orthography is fixed and static.

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Orthography is fixed and static. Well, as far as the spelling of words, the arrangement of letters.

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Yeah. The arrangement of letters, the spelling of words, yes, that that is it. It's immutable,

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meaning that we're not going to change the spelling and we're not going to change the

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alphabet. And it's static, meaning that at the point that a learner is hitting an unfamiliar word,

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the word can't help them. They have to bring to the word everything they need to get to keep moving.

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The word can't help them.

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The word alone can't help them at some point sometimes. Yes, I think we agree on that.

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That's what I'm saying. So you share that paradigm. That's a paradigm that's wrapped around the

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technology, wrapped around the artifact of the orthography.

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The paradigm again is a larger construct and there's theories within it.

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Okay. So what would you call if you guys share, if you guys are different on the core theories

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about reading, but you share this theory. So you're saying you share the theory about the

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orthography, but you share a different theory. You have different theories about how to read with it.

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Picture a dot to dot picture again. That is a fact or an idea that is shared by both theories.

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There are overlaps between a simple view of reading and a neurocognitive view of reading.

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There are overlapping. There are data dots that we both share and that sounds like one of them.

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Yeah, it's definitely one of them. Yeah. So okay, look, I don't want to, I would, I differ with you,

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but I don't want to spend the rest of the day kind of differing on the terminology of things.

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So if you want to call that, you share the theory of orthography and you differ on the theory of

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how to read with it. I share data dots, ideas that say that orthography is less immutable.

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Words evolve, I'm sure the spelling of words are different now than they were 500 years ago. I mean,

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it evolves. But sadly, we are stuck with this conventional way. Our convention says that English

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is spelled this way. And until and unless you become the grand poob of the universe, I don't think

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that's going to change. I would vote for it. Thank you. I'm not talking about changing the

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alphabet or the spelling. I'm talking about, like I said before, and I don't mean to take us off into

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this prematurely. I'm talking about a digital virtual interactive overlay that is available

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to help anybody learn any word they encounter by conducting them through learning how the letters

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relate to the sounds, relate to the spelling, relate to the meaning of the word in whatever

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language and according to whatever background they bring to it. And that that's the necessary and

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inevitable part of the evolution of orthography in a digital world. And we guys are arguing,

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you know, we're in the Stone Age of thinking about orthography. Yes, I agree. We're back in the 60s

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and we have to think 30 years ahead. Absolutely. 30 years from here. That's what 30 years from now,

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that's what I'm saying. I think the whole language and reading thing will, the size of

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reading thing will be like, it'll be next to phrenology in the obsolete paradigm

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area of the library. Well, there's, there's going to be differences. And I agree that you'll be able

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to touch things and words will sound them out and we'll have much more technology to draw on to

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teach us how to read. Yeah. But in 20 years, if people are still using a phonics only bottom-up

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approach and assuming everyone learns the same way, they learn the same way and you must have

387
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prescribed methods, which they're doing now in Minnesota, that will still be back in the 60s.

388
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:15,200
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree. As far as I'm concerned, that it's just mind bogglingly. This

389
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:23,280
is what I mean by paradigm inertia, the way that people's reputations and income streams are welded

390
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:31,600
and tightly bound to defending how they think about all of this is paralyzing our progress and

391
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:38,000
has for decades and is going to continue to until something makes it obsolete. And I think what will

392
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:43,520
make it obsolete is a change in the, in the orthography at the, in the digital ways that I'm

393
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:48,800
describing it. And that's why I would vote for you for Grand Puba of the universe. Because I think

394
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:56,480
that was a huge thought, people's reputation and income. And that's why I'm glad I have no reputation.

395
00:40:56,480 --> 00:41:03,200
I'm okay being a kook and I have no income tied to any of this stuff. How do you afford the barbie

396
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:08,560
land behind you if you don't have any income? Right? I have income, but it's not related to my

397
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:14,400
speaking or my books or anything else. My thing. I've been a nonprofit since before. Yeah, exactly.

398
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:21,440
So people can't say I'm doing this to make money. Yep. Yep. I hear you. I spend more on websites

399
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:27,840
and other stuff than I take in. But I thought that was a very big thought. People are defending

400
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:34,480
their reputation so they can get speaking gigs and consulting gigs and look at me, I'm important.

401
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:39,680
And they're, which is tied to their income, which is tied to their prestige or pride to their

402
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:42,800
self-esteem. And this is what I was saying. This goes all the way back. This is what,

403
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:50,720
there was a famous conversation that Einstein and Bohr had where they got together for some

404
00:41:50,720 --> 00:41:55,440
conference. And as you may recall, Einstein was really against the whole quantum theory and its

405
00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:01,840
unpredictabilities and all that kind of stuff. And Bohr was thinking Einstein was outdated and

406
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:07,440
their students all could, you know, gathered together. And it led the historians of science to

407
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:17,440
say the only reason that science advances is that scientists die. Right? Because of the same

408
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:22,880
phenomena. This paradigm inertia, it runs right through the center of science, which runs right

409
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:28,640
through the center of our world in so many different dimensions. And at the root of paradigm inertia,

410
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:35,600
it's not about the paradigms, it's about the human psychology and its investments and the ways that

411
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:43,280
we defend ourselves where we've psychologically invested ourselves. And I'm seeing, I'm going

412
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:51,440
to break it down even more. I see greed and avarice getting in the way of paradigm shift.

413
00:42:52,240 --> 00:42:57,280
You know, in Minnesota, we have people with no understanding of reading, making these

414
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:03,520
reading bills who went to first grade, that's their level. But then people want to be the next

415
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:09,520
famous person. They want to be recognized. You know, it's, and it's greed, they want to make money.

416
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:15,600
Instead of how can I help these teachers be ready to teach? How can I help this?

417
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:20,160
The bigger problem though, this comes back to where we started with teachers in a way,

418
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:27,840
is that we've got a society that that has been trained out of its learning and needs to become

419
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:33,520
believers. Right? So we need people that want to believe in something in order to stabilize

420
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:39,920
themselves. So they want to believe in your view or somebody else's view or some politician whose

421
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:45,040
name will go beyond us today or whatever. They've got to believe in something to become part of

422
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:52,560
something to feel secure, to become, to be stable, to feel good about themselves. And that's a

423
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:57,360
consequence of them not having any faith in their own first person learning.

424
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:02,480
That is very deep and it goes beyond reading, David. Absolutely. They want simple answers

425
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:08,560
for complex problems. And Phonics first is a simple answer. This is why sometimes people

426
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:13,680
gravitate towards extreme religious views that are black and white. Well, that's an answer.

427
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:18,880
That helps me or just about any religious view, which is based on a belief rather than, I mean,

428
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:25,680
spirituality is about learning, religions about belief. Right? So the way that I put it is,

429
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:33,680
I mean, as much like a religion, zealous. Yeah, so if you were to line up the million people who

430
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:38,800
are lined up behind whole language and the million people that were lined up behind science of reading,

431
00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:44,320
95% of them would be believers. There'd be a few that were piloters, you know, and the rest would

432
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:49,840
be believers, right? That they're going along with the program because they don't trust their own

433
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:54,720
first person learning agency to figure out for themselves what's really best. This back to

434
00:44:54,720 --> 00:45:00,720
becoming a good consumer of science. What adjuxtaposes for me is that I always ask teachers

435
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:05,840
this question, you ever met a toddler who gave up on learning to walk because it was a pain in the

436
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:15,280
ass to fall? No, kids have an innate faith in their own agency, their own capacity to learn until

437
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:23,200
they learn they can't trust it anymore. And it's that that's what ties into this bigger conversation

438
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:28,800
about believers. And and also if you say where is it most kids learn that they can't trust their

439
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:34,000
learning anymore? It's when they hit the artificial learning challenges of things like reading.

440
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:40,000
And when reading instruction is not aligned with their natural way of learning.

441
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:45,600
Yeah, yeah, which doesn't in and of itself say anything about whole language or phonics.

442
00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:52,640
And the thing about whole language is it's not a method or approach. It's a philosophy about

443
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:57,200
how languages best learn. It's best learned when it's kept whole and meaningful to the greatest

444
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:04,560
extent possible. So the fact I don't know if we have thousands of believers in whole language,

445
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:12,560
you know, it's become so muddled. But back to teachers and teaching knowledge is important.

446
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:17,600
And people are beginning teachers are getting beat up out there and I hate to see it.

447
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:25,120
People are not trusting teachers. They're saying teachers are failing when we jam their classes

448
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:31,280
for the kids and we don't provide professional development. You cannot learn everything you

449
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:35,600
need to know about being a teacher in three semesters. You need continued professional

450
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:42,560
professional development. It takes 10 years of gaining knowledge and experience to approach

451
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:49,520
teaching mastery. 10 years. Yeah, I don't know about that. I would say that I mean,

452
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:55,280
I agree with you that there's things to that they should learn. Right. And again,

453
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:01,360
like I quoted at the beginning of our last session, not that I want to go down that rabbit hole

454
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:08,160
all over again. But in my interviews with leading thinkers in the other side of the pond here,

455
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:15,120
what amazed me the most was that what they were arguing for was that teachers actually

456
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:24,800
put themselves in the position of being a struggling reader. Try to understand that from

457
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:31,520
the inside out, not from the outside in. So it's not that it doesn't require both,

458
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:36,640
but there's just no substitute for first person learning. There's never any substitute.

459
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:43,440
There's first person learning and there's roboticize. Yes. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to give you

460
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:49,520
this citation because I was writing a chapter and I just happened to quote it. Kersky and Robinson

461
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:57,600
2017 moving from novice to expertise and its implication for instruction to become an expert.

462
00:47:57,600 --> 00:48:02,640
I think you have to spend 10,000 hours in something and you'll have to have this body of knowledge.

463
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:09,600
Those are all big sweeping generalizations, right? This is their research comparing knowledge

464
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:16,880
and comparing experts and novices in any field. Absolutely. And to be an expert in the field,

465
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:25,520
you have to have knowledge and experience. And so these are the things that makes the

466
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:31,680
difference between if you look at it, if you look at anybody who's out, then I'll let you

467
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:36,880
are saying we don't need teachers with any of that stuff. We just need the approved curriculum,

468
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:42,720
shut up and follow the directions. Yeah, absolutely. I'm totally against that. Me too. Thank you.

469
00:48:42,720 --> 00:48:50,480
And I I spent quite a lot of time arm wrestling with Siegfried Engelman, you know him,

470
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:54,800
you know of him? Probably read him, but I don't have a member.

471
00:48:55,600 --> 00:49:00,800
Grand Puba of direct instruction. He was the one that Washington DC said, well,

472
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:07,200
after I talked to Allington and the rest of the cooks on the one side, they said go send David

473
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:11,600
should go talk with Engelman. He'll set him straight. So I spent six hours or something with

474
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:16,720
Engelman. He's on the direct instruction side, right? Scripting the shit out of everything.

475
00:49:16,720 --> 00:49:22,240
I was totally again. I'm totally against that. Right. So what we could agree on, though, was

476
00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:28,800
minimizing extraneous ambiguity, reducing the amount of unnecessary ambiguity that we're

477
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:33,680
keeping on the learner as they're moving through any particular learning challenge.

478
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:40,720
There's been poobers of direct instruction going back 40 years ago with Robert Major and

479
00:49:40,720 --> 00:49:46,720
Madeleine Hunter. And he goes back he goes back 50 or 60 years. I think he started in the early

480
00:49:46,720 --> 00:49:53,760
60s. I mean, he's the one that if you look up direct instruction, I think the general consensus

481
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:59,840
is he's the kind of father of that movement. And the idea is they tried to teach or proof the

482
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:07,120
curriculum. If you just do this, all will learn. And the difference between a strategy and an

483
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:13,120
approach direct instruction is an important strategy that every teacher should have for

484
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:18,000
certain things. But if that's all you're doing, and that's the problem with the DI people, it's a

485
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:23,920
large DI, they think you need to do direct instruction for everything. It's good for low level

486
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:33,440
skills. Well, we must use direct instruction. Yeah, I think I think that the argument for

487
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:39,360
direct instruction is very much like the argument for phonics, which says that if children are below

488
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:45,120
a certain level of prerequisite skill proficiency, in terms of their language background or speed

489
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:50,480
of all kinds of variables, right, then the more explicit and direct the instruction,

490
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:57,840
the more probably will be effective, right? So that's their general equation. They wouldn't

491
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:04,080
be talking about using direct instruction or phonics instruction in the same way with kids that are

492
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:10,960
coming out of really well prepared trajectories in life and that don't need that kind of

493
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:18,160
hyper scripting. And that that goes to your point to a kid that's got the right kind of

494
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:26,080
vocabulary, the right kind of processing skills, verbal dexterities, confidence in themselves,

495
00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:31,280
confidence in their learning, their level is lying and many others that said they can learn with any

496
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:38,640
damn system. It's the ones that are way behind the curve that we've got to bring more specific,

497
00:51:38,640 --> 00:51:44,960
highly scripted or highly structured takeoff ramps for. And this is what direct instruction is one

498
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:52,240
method of teaching phonics. Now, according to the National Reading Panel report, there's direct

499
00:51:52,240 --> 00:51:58,800
instruction with this synthetic phonics. There's analytic phonics, there's embedded phonics,

500
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:04,480
teaching phonics by spelling, and there's analogy or word parts or large unit phonics.

501
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:11,760
And what does the National Reading Panel Holy Book report say? All are equally effective,

502
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:18,720
meaning that if I'm only doing direct instruction with synthetic phonics, I'm falling far

503
00:52:18,720 --> 00:52:23,440
short of the glory. Teachers need to use the approach that's working with their kids and use

504
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:28,160
them all. Well, the last part of what you said is what's most important, right? Is that all these

505
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:34,000
things may be generally relevant. What's particularly relevant depends on the particular child.

506
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:40,800
And there we got it. Research can support something. Research shows that, but it's effective for who,

507
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:47,680
for what, for what purpose. Exactly. Yes. And it doesn't matter if it's effective with 80% of the

508
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:55,040
population, if it's not effective for your kids. It gives us a sense of what might work. But the

509
00:52:55,040 --> 00:53:02,560
teacher is the ultimate filter. How is this working with my kid? Yep. And I can't tell you how many

510
00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:08,160
times I have it all planned out how I'm going to work with a kid, sit down with the kid, plans go

511
00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:13,200
out the window. That's what... Yeah, well, that's because you're paying attention to the kid. Yes.

512
00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:18,240
So not running robotically according to what you think they should, how they should be taught.

513
00:53:18,240 --> 00:53:26,000
Your knowledge and skills as being differentially adapted to what feedback you're getting

514
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:30,720
from observing the actual child following you. Absolutely. As you're pushing the child, right?

515
00:53:30,720 --> 00:53:35,840
Agree on that. And that we totally agree. Yeah. Teachers should be able to use their experience

516
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:43,520
and expertise. At the same time, they should have some knowledge of research-based tools. Science of

517
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:46,960
reading is saying, shut up and follow the directions. This is the way you do it.

518
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:56,720
Yeah, I think that's an unfortunate characterization. I'm not sure. I don't, I can't speak for the entire

519
00:53:56,720 --> 00:54:01,360
country and all the different ways that science of reading is being rammed down the throats of

520
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:06,800
people all over the country. I can't speak to that. I can tell you that the people that I talk to that

521
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:13,680
are the foundational core people to the emergence of the science of reading that's in prominence

522
00:54:13,680 --> 00:54:19,760
today, that those people would say, no, it's not about following some mechanical script. It's about

523
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:25,040
getting teachers to really ask themselves, what does it take to learn to read? To actually be,

524
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:31,280
like you were just describing, sync up with what's going on in the child and unfold a pathway that

525
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:38,720
works for them. And we can have the researchers over there who are saying these things, but when

526
00:54:38,720 --> 00:54:45,680
it becomes to state legislatures, the political and the for-profits get involved, and all of a

527
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:50,960
sudden you're having curriculum that is mandated. You're having approaches. You're having professional

528
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:56,480
development like letters. Yeah, now this cuts into another conversation. I know you don't like

529
00:54:56,480 --> 00:55:01,520
these characters, but I'm just going to use them as a quick reference point. I interviewed the people

530
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:06,880
that were the architects of the no child left behind movement, right, back in the Bush administration.

531
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:15,680
And they said, building on Haberman's work and Allington's work and Hennessex work at the Hoover

532
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:22,320
Institute and a bunch of others, they came up with this model that said roughly one-third of the

533
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:30,400
teachers out there understand what they're doing and care about the students. One-third of the

534
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:35,520
teachers out there, right, care about the students but don't know what they're doing. And one-third

535
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:40,320
of the teachers out there don't care about the students and don't know what they're doing. So

536
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:46,240
in other words, two-thirds of the teacher population was pretty much incompetent and about two-thirds

537
00:55:46,240 --> 00:55:53,600
of the teacher, two-thirds cared, but two-thirds were incompetent. Well, two things, of course,

538
00:55:53,600 --> 00:55:57,360
you know, how did that no child left behind work out? How did that work out? It didn't.

539
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:02,560
And characterizing teachers that way is very hurtful. I understand. I understand. I understand.

540
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:10,240
But that is a common perception. Exactly. That is why, that is that common perception that leads

541
00:56:10,240 --> 00:56:16,880
to what you were just describing, the reason why state houses and for-profit organizations are able

542
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:24,960
to force this kind of a structural, systematic way of doing things is because they don't trust

543
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:31,200
the teachers to be first-person learning agents that can differentiate them what's necessary for

544
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:38,080
each child. And so because they don't trust the teachers, huh? Why don't they trust it? Two things,

545
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:44,240
the teacher bashing, it's a become a political football. It's easy to bash a teacher, overcrowding

546
00:56:44,240 --> 00:56:51,360
all the other variables, including healthcare nutrition and add on top of that this myth that's

547
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:59,520
created that there's a crisis in reading. That is a myth. That is a myth, but they're perpetuating

548
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:06,400
that at the expense of learning, at the expense of teachers. So according, so you don't think

549
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:14,560
NAEP is accurate. How much would you discount NAEP? Oh, I think NAEP is a good, reliable source.

550
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:22,320
And NAEP says 84% of African-American fourth-grade children are underwater in reading,

551
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:28,400
imperfection with reading. And that's still 80% of African-American kids are that way in the 12th

552
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:34,480
grade. Overall, it says almost two-thirds of all the kids in this country are chronically not good

553
00:57:34,480 --> 00:57:39,120
enough at reading on grade level from the time they enter school to the time they leave. And let's

554
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:46,400
take a look at the NAEP data. NAEP shows that in general scores are had been rising slightly since

555
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:55,280
1972. They can go very, it's near it's closer to flat line than rising. So look from 72 to 2022.

556
00:57:55,280 --> 00:57:59,360
I do. I've got it all over my website. I can show you an image of it. It's pretty much flat line.

557
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:06,720
Is there a, well, flat line, is there a statistically significant difference? And it has that little

558
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:12,960
asterisk between 1972 and today. When you look at it from that, you know, the graph can look kind

559
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:18,400
of flat, but look to see if there's statistically significant. Yeah. So we, so we went from 90%

560
00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:26,080
African-American to 86%. Right. They have that progress. They have these categories called

561
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:33,520
proficient, not proficient. These are arbitrarily defined categories, arbitrarily defined. They

562
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:39,680
do that in Minnesota. They don't report scores. They report percentages of students who fall in

563
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:47,840
categories. That gives us no comparative data. Is there an achievement graph? There is an equity

564
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:56,720
gap, meaning that students of color, students in low SES, they have an unfair disadvantage

565
00:58:56,720 --> 00:59:05,280
based on. We're still talking about almost 60% of all kids are imperfection by their standards.

566
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:11,760
Are imperfection. Improficient. Improficient. Below the level of being proficient. Where my

567
00:59:11,760 --> 00:59:16,720
understanding from talking with the people that design NAPE is that proficiency is the threshold

568
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:22,720
at which if they're below proficiency, then their, their reading is interfering with learning in

569
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:27,440
their grade level. They're not able to read transparent. Reading is not transparent to

570
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:32,560
learning in their grade level. And here's how you solve that. You just lower the level of what

571
00:59:32,560 --> 00:59:39,840
you decided proficiency is. And that is the snake oil, the scan that goes on. So then you don't

572
00:59:39,840 --> 00:59:43,920
trust NAPE. I tried to ask you a minute ago. You think NAPE was, I asked you, what did you think

573
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:48,160
of NAPE? And you said you thought it was a good source of information. It was. It was. I don't

574
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:53,600
agree with the categories. It is a good, it is a good source of data. It gives us a general sense

575
00:59:53,600 --> 00:59:59,760
of how. So how does it, how does it really, isn't it amazing to you that the now and NAPE line up so

576
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:09,360
well? Now that the national adult literacy studies, the US Department of Education has the K12 and it

577
01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:14,800
has now, which studies the adult literacy, right? And the adult literacy, when you look at the number

578
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:20,720
of adults that are reading at fifth or sixth grade level, for example, kind of matches up with the

579
01:00:20,720 --> 01:00:27,680
number of kids coming out of K12 that are below proficient. How can these two different systems

580
01:00:27,680 --> 01:00:37,040
fit so well together? This is why I can't compare children in K12 to adults. It's two different

581
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:43,520
populations. Well, when you're talking about 12th graders coming out of school and their reading

582
01:00:43,520 --> 01:00:49,440
scores pretty much match up with adult literacy in the country. Adult literacy is something

583
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:56,880
different. But let me just mention that. Reading is a skill that continues to grow and get better

584
01:00:56,880 --> 01:01:02,240
as you get older. I'm a better reader. You continue to learn to be better, grow as something happens,

585
01:01:02,240 --> 01:01:07,040
as a sponge. It's like playing the piano. You're able to process things and you have knowledge that

586
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:13,200
helped you read better. I'm a better reader now at 65 than I was at 55 because I've had millions of

587
01:01:13,200 --> 01:01:18,240
more words poured over my head. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on all that. I don't see how that

588
01:01:18,240 --> 01:01:22,320
it's just anything I just put up for though. Well, when they're making these comparisons

589
01:01:22,320 --> 01:01:27,680
to kids in school or even in 12th grade with adults, now if you want to talk about people.

590
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:34,240
I'm not, they're not making the comparison. I'm saying there seems to be a reciprocal,

591
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:43,600
credible, rising relationship between now's adult literacy studies and NAEP's K12 studies,

592
01:01:43,600 --> 01:01:50,640
that if K12 is speaking, if K12 was really off, you'd see that greater proficiency in adult

593
01:01:50,640 --> 01:01:55,600
population. The fact that they kind of work together, they kind of fit together, even though

594
01:01:55,600 --> 01:02:02,960
they're being arrived at or the kind of data that's underneath getting to them is from two

595
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:09,920
different planets. And I guess to answer your question that NAEP, I rely on that data. I think

596
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:19,520
the categories are arbitrarily defined. The data is the... So discount that for me. Do

597
01:02:19,520 --> 01:02:25,280
they make a distinction between basic and proficiency? Forget about advanced and all that

598
01:02:25,280 --> 01:02:30,320
stuff. The majority of kids in the country are below proficiency on their scale, right? Below

599
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:35,680
and it gets... And if you disaggregate that, the poverty and children of color, it gets worse and

600
01:02:35,680 --> 01:02:43,680
worse and worse up into the 80%, like I mentioned, right? But even though the average white child

601
01:02:43,680 --> 01:02:49,520
well off is in the 50s, more than half of them are below proficient. When I go to the school

602
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:55,360
districts that I talk to or go to, they don't have any problem saying that they agree with it in terms

603
01:02:55,360 --> 01:03:01,040
of their experience of how much reading is interfering with learning in their classrooms.

604
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:06,160
I haven't anybody come back. I've had some state legislators come back and push back on that stuff

605
01:03:06,160 --> 01:03:11,680
for political reasons, but I've never had educators go, wow, NAEP is just really off. It doesn't fit

606
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:19,440
my experience in my school. Quite the contrary. And the question is, comparing now to 10 years ago

607
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:26,240
to 20 years ago, are those scores going down? And these are arbitrarily not the categories,

608
01:03:26,240 --> 01:03:32,800
but the average scores. The average scores, the categories, what is proficient and basic.

609
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:37,680
The average scores have changed very, very little in 30 years. They've got... Well,

610
01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:43,840
pop one of them up on the screen. When you look at the fourth grade, the eighth grade, the 12th

611
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:50,160
grade, it seems if you look at that from a distance, but you'll have to look at statistically

612
01:03:50,160 --> 01:03:58,640
significant change. If you get a large population and a score goes from 257 to 261, that could be a

613
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:04,240
statistically significant difference. It may not seem like that for the average...

614
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:08,160
Well, I'm not saying it's not statistically significant, but when you talk about still

615
01:04:08,160 --> 01:04:16,000
half of the kids in this country learning to feel less confident in their mind, in their learning,

616
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:21,040
because of their difficulty with reading, and that's been going on for more than 30 years,

617
01:04:21,040 --> 01:04:26,240
and it involves a significant dimension of our population, it's hard not to think that there's

618
01:04:26,240 --> 01:04:33,520
a reading problem in this country. Well, the thing was there's a crisis to reading. We must do better.

619
01:04:33,520 --> 01:04:39,280
There has always been problems with how we teach reading. People should be more literate,

620
01:04:39,280 --> 01:04:44,320
absolutely. And if they took a meaning-based approach, that would occur. I know that's a

621
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:51,360
generalization. But the fact that reading used to be better 10 years ago, 2030, and now it's worse,

622
01:04:51,360 --> 01:05:04,480
and there's this bad crisis, that is a myth, that it's somehow worse right now. That's the

623
01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:15,440
difference between research and data. This is 30 years... Yeah, I want to see the actual scale.

624
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:21,920
I want to see the NAP data, not how someone chooses to present the NAP data.

625
01:05:23,840 --> 01:05:30,240
This is the... This is why you have to be a responsible consumer of this stuff, David.

626
01:05:31,120 --> 01:05:36,880
This is... This is NAPE data. This is NAPE data right here. Yes. I put this together. I created

627
01:05:36,880 --> 01:05:42,800
this from NAPE. Okay. Every percentage you see, this is across a 30-year span. If you keep going

628
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:46,560
with this, I'll be muted because you don't need to hear it. No, no, no. That's okay. And it's not

629
01:05:46,560 --> 01:05:51,280
that I don't love and trust you, David, but I want to go back to... Here you go. Here's the scale

630
01:05:51,280 --> 01:06:01,440
scores. Okay? Yes. And I want... That's 217, 220. Fourth grade, 217, 220. Yep. Out of 500. So is it

631
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:08,400
significant? Three points? Yeah. Does it point still to a massively ugly situation? Yes.

632
01:06:08,400 --> 01:06:15,840
What? Tell me more about that. What this is saying is in 2000, 1992, and I don't know...

633
01:06:15,840 --> 01:06:20,160
Yep. We don't have the statistical significant scores here. It would have a little asterisk.

634
01:06:20,800 --> 01:06:30,400
Is it statistically significant in 2018? The latest one is 2022. Is there a statistically

635
01:06:30,400 --> 01:06:37,200
significant difference? Meaning, are we getting worse? There's going to be natural ebbs and flows

636
01:06:37,200 --> 01:06:42,720
ups and downs in the data. Is it a statistically significant difference? The overall picture is...

637
01:06:42,720 --> 01:06:52,560
So maybe back in 1992, 68% of kids were below proficiency and today only 66. But gee, 66 is

638
01:06:52,560 --> 01:06:59,200
terrible. It's not about the small gain. It's about the overall big picture. We're talking about

639
01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:06,000
general reading scores, the average. Is there this crisis? And we're not talking categories.

640
01:07:06,000 --> 01:07:11,680
We're talking average scores. Those categories are arbitrarily defined. You can't compare

641
01:07:11,680 --> 01:07:17,760
percentages in categories that are arbitrarily defined. They said, I think this is below

642
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:25,760
proficiency. I think this is basic. Is there a gap in scores? Absolutely. There's an equity gap.

643
01:07:26,320 --> 01:07:31,920
Do we need to address reading differently? Absolutely. Is the science of reading going

644
01:07:31,920 --> 01:07:38,800
to fix that and make scores go up? We tried that with the Reading First Initiative 20 years ago.

645
01:07:38,800 --> 01:07:44,800
That came out of no challenge behind. That's essentially what science... And they would say that

646
01:07:47,040 --> 01:07:52,240
was it a decade long subscription to whole language that occurred in California in the...

647
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:57,920
What was it? 80s or something like that led to the greatest generational loss of learning in

648
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:02,800
the state of California's history. And that's what they used as an argument for the science of reading.

649
01:08:02,800 --> 01:08:09,840
So they would come back and say the same thing about what you're saying. No, actually, that study

650
01:08:09,840 --> 01:08:16,960
in California, that wasn't a research study. That was people looking at data. When they actually

651
01:08:16,960 --> 01:08:22,400
looked at NAEP scores and they differentiated between those who identified as whole language

652
01:08:22,400 --> 01:08:25,600
and those who identified as whole language. Now you're quoting NAEP scores?

653
01:08:25,600 --> 01:08:32,320
I absolutely believe NAEP scores are good. It's the categories within. But they found that whole

654
01:08:32,320 --> 01:08:39,280
language teachers actually had higher scores than those who identified as skills base. But that's

655
01:08:39,280 --> 01:08:45,680
one research study. It doesn't prove anything. But this idea that whole language was the variable,

656
01:08:45,680 --> 01:08:52,720
was the cause of something, that is naive, unscientific thinking. Sadly, that's the kind

657
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:58,560
of thinking that's used by science of reading advocates. There is hard data on the reading

658
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:06,480
first initiative that it was a billion dollar boondoggle. States got money. If they subscribe

659
01:09:06,480 --> 01:09:11,120
to it, they got lots of money. So on the state level, California and Florida, some of these are

660
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:17,280
going, oh, this is great. Give me more money. But when the national people looked at it, they said,

661
01:09:17,280 --> 01:09:22,480
this is a billion dollar boondoggle. And that's what science of reading is going to be like.

662
01:09:22,480 --> 01:09:27,440
Five years down the line, people are going to say, that's silly little bald man. Maybe you had a point.

663
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:34,800
Yeah. Well, unfortunately, the science of reading thing got its power from the decoding

664
01:09:34,800 --> 01:09:41,280
dyslexia groups that have forced the legislators to adopt science of reading as it relates to the

665
01:09:41,280 --> 01:09:47,920
dyslexia movement. Right. So look, there's no question that it's just all about politics in a way.

666
01:09:47,920 --> 01:09:54,560
And money. And the assumption that we can't solve these problems in an entirely different way

667
01:09:55,120 --> 01:10:02,160
by making the orthography elastic. We could have done this decades ago already. Anyway, back to the

668
01:10:03,040 --> 01:10:09,120
point about NAEP. So discount, how many kids do you, if you disagree with NAEP's categorization,

669
01:10:09,840 --> 01:10:14,480
do you agree that there's a line that we should draw somewhere between what you might call

670
01:10:14,480 --> 01:10:20,240
elemental basic skills where somebody who could take a long time to read a label on a pill bottle

671
01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:28,480
is different than somebody who could read fluently at the level of complexity and vocabulary necessary

672
01:10:28,480 --> 01:10:33,920
to be successful at their grade level in school? Right. There's a difference between those. Yeah.

673
01:10:34,560 --> 01:10:42,880
There's differences. Yes. Okay. So would you agree with as a conceptual definition for the moment

674
01:10:42,880 --> 01:10:50,160
that with proficiency, what we hope to mean by that term is that reading would be transparent to

675
01:10:50,160 --> 01:10:58,080
learning in the written content of your grade level? Reading would be comparable to the written

676
01:10:58,080 --> 01:11:03,840
content at your grade level. No, reading would be transparent to you could, in other words,

677
01:11:03,840 --> 01:11:09,200
reading would not interfere with learning. It would be transparent to learning at the grade level.

678
01:11:09,200 --> 01:11:14,800
So when you're reading a fifth grade textbook that requires you to understand the language there,

679
01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:20,240
that reading wouldn't be a problem for you learning from that textbook. Right. Reading wouldn't be a

680
01:11:20,240 --> 01:11:25,360
problem from you doing research or doing what any kind of classroom assignments that required

681
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:31,520
reading at that grade level. So proficiency means that your reading skills, your reading abilities

682
01:11:31,520 --> 01:11:34,960
are transparent to your ability to learn at the grade level you're in.

683
01:11:34,960 --> 01:11:45,840
We need to read at a certain level, but grade levels are an abstraction. They're not very

684
01:11:45,840 --> 01:11:50,080
abstract. Of course they are, but they do exist. They do exist. They create fifth grade textbooks.

685
01:11:50,080 --> 01:11:55,680
When you say something is at the fifth grade level, therefore a fifth grader should be able to read it.

686
01:11:56,400 --> 01:12:02,240
Well, if one is familiar with the concepts that are being described, sentence complexity,

687
01:12:02,240 --> 01:12:09,360
vocabulary, that's all in that ability to read. So if you're coming here without experiences,

688
01:12:09,360 --> 01:12:15,280
with different experiences, with culturally different experiences, you are going to score

689
01:12:15,280 --> 01:12:21,920
lower on these grade level measures. Doesn't mean that the reading instruction is bad. It's

690
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:29,040
probably culturally biased. If we tapped into students natural ways of learning and incorporate

691
01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:34,480
that, you can get out by disaggregating all these scores, and that's a different conversation. We

692
01:12:34,480 --> 01:12:38,640
can do that. That wasn't my question. I was just trying to get a handle on where do you,

693
01:12:38,640 --> 01:12:44,960
how would you describe proficiency? To me, what I'm describing, I'm saying proficiency,

694
01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:51,760
grade level proficiency means reading is not interfering. It's making learning possible at

695
01:12:51,760 --> 01:12:56,480
the grade level content of your grade level. And yes, we could say grade levels are blurry and

696
01:12:56,480 --> 01:13:00,800
they're arbitrary. And yes, yes, yes. But nonetheless, there's fifth grade textbooks and

697
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:06,400
eighth grade textbooks, right? There are all kinds of materials that are generated around the assumption

698
01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:11,760
of grade level categorization. So inside those categorizations, which are part of the conventional

699
01:13:11,760 --> 01:13:17,120
system of education, proficiency means that if you're a sixth grade proficient, that reading is

700
01:13:17,120 --> 01:13:23,200
not an issue for you inside that space. Yeah, you may have background knowledge issues. You may have

701
01:13:23,200 --> 01:13:31,760
vocabulary issues. But if you can read well, you could learn those things as you encounter them in

702
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:37,520
the classroom or in the textbook. To say it's an issue is a deficiency lens. If you are proficient,

703
01:13:37,520 --> 01:13:42,880
you're able to create meaning with print. There's more complex and less complex. I get uncomfortable

704
01:13:42,880 --> 01:13:50,400
with quantifying students and students learning. I know there has to be some sort of bar. But I

705
01:13:50,400 --> 01:13:56,000
think the bigger question is, are there categories who decided this is proficient, this isn't

706
01:13:56,000 --> 01:14:04,080
proficient? What type of material are you reading? I don't know if we're coming to anything here.

707
01:14:04,800 --> 01:14:13,920
Well, I mean, a whole massive gathering of educational scientists and researchers are

708
01:14:13,920 --> 01:14:19,920
pulled into the Institute of Educational Science to flesh out and work out some kind of consensual

709
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:24,880
understanding about how to make these categories. So it's not just your thinking or my thinking,

710
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:32,000
but it's some kind of consensus of the people that study those distinctions. And could they make

711
01:14:32,000 --> 01:14:38,640
mistakes? Sure. But are they making mistakes that are a radical magnitude of order off? I don't think

712
01:14:38,640 --> 01:14:46,480
so. I mean, given the manifest intelligence in our population, I don't think so.

713
01:14:46,480 --> 01:14:53,040
It goes back to the categories are arbitrarily defined, and they said this is proficient,

714
01:14:53,040 --> 01:14:57,760
this is basic, this is that. And I was just trying to say, if you just want to throw them out,

715
01:14:57,760 --> 01:15:00,880
how much should we discount them in order to make it safe for your mind?

716
01:15:01,760 --> 01:15:06,160
If you think that's, where would you draw the proficiency line on the spectrum that we were

717
01:15:06,160 --> 01:15:12,080
looking at? You have to make a decision right now. I don't know. I don't feel comfortable

718
01:15:12,080 --> 01:15:17,120
drawing a proficiency line on a measure like that. So then you don't think, I mean,

719
01:15:19,040 --> 01:15:22,240
then why, if we're not going to do that, then why assess reading at all?

720
01:15:23,040 --> 01:15:30,720
It gives us a general sense of where we're at. We should not rely on that. That should not be,

721
01:15:30,720 --> 01:15:36,880
that is just a general sense of where we're at. And does it support that there's a massive reading

722
01:15:36,880 --> 01:15:44,480
crisis? No, and that was the basis of the argument. There's a massive failure, and NAEP data simply

723
01:15:44,480 --> 01:15:53,360
does not show that. Well, that's, that's totally a matter of interpretation. NAEP says, to me,

724
01:15:54,560 --> 01:16:00,560
80 plus percent of African American kids and 60 plus percent of white and everything in between,

725
01:16:00,560 --> 01:16:05,760
based on socioeconomics and color and all the other variables, that the majority of kids in this

726
01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:12,320
country are underwater with reading, meaning that their capacity for reading is less than what's

727
01:16:12,320 --> 01:16:19,520
required to be successful in school at every level and throughout school. Absolutely. But the thesis

728
01:16:19,520 --> 01:16:25,840
was, then how can that not be a reading crisis? If you just agreed with that, the argument that's

729
01:16:25,840 --> 01:16:32,160
been made is there a crisis, the scores are going down and we have to do something differently.

730
01:16:32,160 --> 01:16:36,640
And my, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The scores are going down. They have,

731
01:16:36,640 --> 01:16:40,160
not about whether the scores are going down, it's whether the whole big picture is bad.

732
01:16:40,960 --> 01:16:47,440
That we always need to improve our ability to teach reading. Absolutely. How many, let's put

733
01:16:47,440 --> 01:16:51,280
it another way, how many kids should be in proficient? How many kids is an acceptable

734
01:16:51,280 --> 01:16:56,560
percentage of our population to be not good enough at reading in school? What do you think?

735
01:16:56,560 --> 01:17:02,000
A hundred percent of children should be able to create meeting with prints so that they can

736
01:17:02,000 --> 01:17:10,400
succeed, so that they can learn. The argument is scores are going down. We need to do something

737
01:17:10,400 --> 01:17:16,480
radically different. And it's this variable. It's because people aren't teaching phonics,

738
01:17:16,480 --> 01:17:20,400
is the reason why. Yeah, that's different. I'm not about phonics. But that's the argument that's

739
01:17:20,400 --> 01:17:27,840
being made. That's why I'm not. I'm saying the whole system has been chronically not good enough

740
01:17:27,840 --> 01:17:32,400
at getting enough kids to be proficient in reading for as long as we can remember,

741
01:17:32,400 --> 01:17:38,800
as long as we've got data. I agree that. No, it's been not good enough at getting the majority of

742
01:17:38,800 --> 01:17:44,960
our population to read well enough to be successful in school for as long as we've known. I agree with

743
01:17:44,960 --> 01:17:49,760
that. I agree. That's the point. That's the problem. That's the crisis. It doesn't have to do with

744
01:17:49,760 --> 01:17:55,600
little tiny fluctuations in the data line. Well, that's the argument that's being made. There's

745
01:17:55,600 --> 01:18:01,200
this sudden crisis that we well not for you, I'm sorry. That's what the science that's a

746
01:18:01,200 --> 01:18:08,240
manufactured crisis that was in a crisis 10 years ago. Was it a crisis 30 years ago? Why do we want

747
01:18:08,240 --> 01:18:14,800
to go back to the 1960s with our instruction if there was a crisis then and we're using the same

748
01:18:14,800 --> 01:18:21,120
method? Yeah, no, I completely disconnect this from methods of teaching. I'm saying the whole

749
01:18:21,120 --> 01:18:26,320
system is underwater. It's been underwater for as long as we've known and that for me, the big

750
01:18:26,320 --> 01:18:32,240
consequence of this isn't even reading. It's that how does a kid feel who goes through their entire

751
01:18:32,240 --> 01:18:37,680
educational experience feeling not good enough mentally? Absolutely. I think it's due to them.

752
01:18:38,240 --> 01:18:43,280
But I can't connect. I can't disconnect with methods of teaching because that's affecting

753
01:18:43,280 --> 01:18:49,040
real teachers and real kids. All the methods of teaching, despite the fact that you don't think

754
01:18:49,040 --> 01:18:55,360
they're at war, they've been in conflict with each other and the consequence of that is this

755
01:18:55,360 --> 01:19:01,520
near flat line of terrible end results with respect to our whole population and reading. Our

756
01:19:01,520 --> 01:19:07,040
whole population and reading is terrible and has been for as long as we keep track of it and we

757
01:19:07,040 --> 01:19:12,800
keep arguing over how to teach it in different ways. We must continue to think about how to

758
01:19:12,800 --> 01:19:19,200
teach it. Absolutely. That there's been this proven study, that whole language causes something or

759
01:19:19,200 --> 01:19:28,160
this is the variable? Yeah. I don't think that. Again, I think all of these paradigms, theories,

760
01:19:28,160 --> 01:19:32,960
models, whatever you want to call them, are warped around certain assumptions that themselves

761
01:19:32,960 --> 01:19:40,400
are going to be blown up in the next few years and it isn't going to matter that much. But the

762
01:19:40,400 --> 01:19:48,480
big problem is we need to do something about this because the great hope of America and the world

763
01:19:48,480 --> 01:19:53,920
and our kids and our futures is turning up the learning radically, turning up the learning.

764
01:19:53,920 --> 01:20:00,400
One of the biggest obstacles to turning up the learning in our world is how many kids are stuck

765
01:20:00,400 --> 01:20:07,200
in this ladder of learning to read. We agree on that and I agree with you. The next question

766
01:20:07,200 --> 01:20:14,880
and maybe the conversation for next time is how? What can we do to create, to better prepare teachers

767
01:20:14,880 --> 01:20:20,320
but to better prepare our students to read and meet the complexities of the real world? What can

768
01:20:20,320 --> 01:20:28,640
we do differently? Yep. I'd love that. Let's divide up our time next time and I want to give you,

769
01:20:28,640 --> 01:20:34,400
and rather than me kind of pushing you around as you say things and are you doing that with me,

770
01:20:34,400 --> 01:20:40,880
let's take half the time and you just present what you think is the way to go. I will kind of

771
01:20:40,880 --> 01:20:46,560
push back on it but leave you to drive the current and you do the same for me and I'll

772
01:20:46,560 --> 01:20:50,880
give my sense of where the orthography transformation needs to happen. Okay. So what

773
01:20:50,880 --> 01:20:59,440
do I think should be included in a reading program, reading curriculum? Yeah. You're going to change

774
01:20:59,440 --> 01:21:03,600
the world. This whole thing we talked about today, this problem, right? How would you do it?

775
01:21:03,600 --> 01:21:08,800
How would you, if you could be the grandpoop boss you say, right, what would you do to change the

776
01:21:08,800 --> 01:21:16,400
reading trajectory of the country? I will solve that problem next time. So listeners, stay tuned

777
01:21:16,400 --> 01:21:22,480
in two weeks because I'm going to show you how to solve David's smile. How to solve the reading problem.

778
01:21:23,360 --> 01:21:26,560
Yeah. And I'm going to make a suggestion of my own that'll be different.

779
01:21:26,560 --> 01:21:33,680
I love this, David. I love it. Yes. Because I think it's bringing us back to the brass

780
01:21:33,680 --> 01:21:40,720
tax. What do we do? What do we need more of? What do we need less of? Okay. Got a good place to stop?

781
01:21:40,720 --> 01:21:57,200
Good for today. Yeah. I'll stop the recording here.