The Context of Crisis
If you were to consume a lot of popular media today related to education, you would be led to believe that there is a reading crisis.  Apparently, it’s all “deeply concerning”.   I can’t help but wonder if this current crisis is a new crisis or an extension of an old crisis.  In 1983 the United States was said to be “at risk” because of a crisis that started in 1963 (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983).  Was that crisis ever resolved?  Is this crisis an extension of that crisis?  Or is it brand new crisis?  

In 1983 teachers were told they need to get back to the basics.  Did we not get back far enough?  Did we not get basic enough?  Did our basic backtracking not take?  Do we need to get back to basics much harder?  Are we still basic backtracking?  If we’re not getting back to basics, what are we getting to? 

Understanding Crisis
Let’s understand exactly what a crisis is.  A crisis is a situation that has reached a critical phase.  It’s a situation of danger or instability in which a solution is needed (see Chapter 2).  A crisis is the point in the TV show where Commissioner Gordon shines the bat spotlight into the sky to alert Batman (this was a time before cell phones).  Only Batman can bring us back to the pre-crisis stage.

If the only information I consumed was information vetted by the decision makers in popular media, American Public Media, or by government agencies, I would tend to agree.  I too would be out in the backyard shining my flashlight up in the sky, wondering when Batman was going to come to save us from the penguins and jokers who are causing so much havoc in our public schools.

“Where’s Batman?”

	If I were to rely on information provided by people who benefited from certain outcomes, I too would believe there’s a horrible reading crisis.  If I smiled and nodded my head like a bobble-head doll, every time information was given to me by those who have a social, political, or economic stake in the game, I too would think that there were massive numbers of children who weren’t learning to read.   I’d be working hard to find an instructional vaccine to prevent children from catching illiteracy.  I’d be doing that instead of writing this book.  I’d be looking for the Holy Grail of reading instruction.  This is the magic method for teaching children to read that real scientists have proven to be the best.  In short, I would be a card-carrying member of the Science of Reading (SoR) movement.

	But I’m not.
	Why not?  Because of context.  It matters.


The Current SoR Movement
The current SoR movement is based on inadequate, inaccurate, or incomplete information related to teaching, learning, reading, and learning to read.  It relies heavily on decontextualized data.  Context matters a lot when you’re looking to make sense of things, (like reading instruction).  Data must always be understood and evaluated in the context in which it was found.  A single research study can only be fully understood in the context of a wider array of research studies.  It takes a wide array of research studies to develop a theory.  Theories must be understood in the context of a paradigm.  Paradigms tend to reflect social, cultural, and political changes.  So, to understand the current Science of Reading movement, you have to put it in the social, political, and economic contexts of our time and in the context of past educational reform movements.  

Yes, we have had iterations of the current SoR movement before.  These past reading reforms took place in the context of great social, political, and cultural changes (Tierney & Pearson, 2021).  And like today’s reform, these past reforms usually promoted simple answers for complex situations.

The Dustbin
Like past “reforms”, this current SoR movement will have a life span of five to eight years.  So, if I’m right, you will see a 2nd or 3rd edition of this book sometime around 2031.  And if I’m wrong, I’ll be just a silly, little bald man left in the dustbin of academic obscurity.  But here’s the thing: I would love to be proven wrong.  I would love nothing more than to see these new reading initiatives produce measurable gains in reading comprehension in 2031.  I’d be overjoyed if more children developed a deep love of reading.   I’d be thrilled if, in 2013, there was an increase in voluntary reading.  I’d be delighted if more children would be able to read and understand more complex texts.  I’d be tickled pink if we could see more complex forms of thinking and writing.   I’d be delighted if children were better able to use reading and writing for real-world purposes, and if more children were able to achieve their full literacy potential.  

I’d love to be in that dustbin.  But we’ve seen this movie before.  One needs only to look to the Reading First Initiative of 2002 to see how this movie ends.  The question to ask is this: When this reform fails, as it inevitably will, who will be blamed?  I suspect it will again be teachers, professors, and public education.  I highly suspect that some for-profit entity will have a new fix-it-up remedy to sell us.

The sad thing is that in the interim, many good teachers will have left the classroom.  And millions of dollars will have been wasted.  Children will have wasted hours of good instructional time learning how to sound out lists of decontextualized and nonsense words.  They will have been force-fed a bland diet of reading poorly written decodable books without pictures.  Then they’ll be asked to love reading by some celebrity holding a book.