This is The Reading Instruction Show. I am your
host, Dr. Andy Johnson. Topic of today's show
is called John Stossel, My Adventure in Television.
Now on August 8th, 2025, I was sitting in my
basement writing my next New York Times best
-selling book about reading instruction when
I got an email. Bing! and it said, Hi, Dr. Johnson,
my name is Dan Stefano. Dan Stefano, Stefano,
I'm a producer with John Stossel for Stossel
TV. We're doing a story on the literacy crisis
in America and it came across your advocacy for
whole word reading instruction and would like
to get your take on the subject. If you're interested,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? Now, I'm
often very naive about things, but I'm not naive
enough to think John Stasso really wanted my
take, quote unquote, on anything. He didn't really
want to understand the literacy crisis or anything
related to literacy. He had no real interest
in my thoughts on any issue. He was looking for
good TV. And because I drink 15 plus cups of
coffee a day, and I tend to be a bit over -excitable,
I am good TV. And when I really get worked up,
I wave my arms in the air and twitch a lot, and
my voice goes up a couple octaves. Picture an
over -caffeinated Barney Fife. Nip it, nip it.
Nip it in the bud. Good TV. It was obvious from
the message that the sender that Dan sent that
Dan didn't know much about reading instruction.
And this is not an uncommon occurrence for those
entering into the science of reading discussion
from the outside. Here is my very polite response
to Dan. Hi, Dan. I'd be happy to do an interview,
but it is not whole word reading instruction.
This doesn't exist. I can talk about whole language,
meaning -based instruction, or balanced literacy.
I don't know of anybody who currently advocates
whole word instruction. Okay, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. So, whole word instruction. Let's
look at this. I... I'm not quite sure what whole
word reading instruction is, and I'm an alleged
reading expert. John Stossel also brought this
up during the interview, so let me try to clarify.
First, the look -say approach. In the early 60s,
there was something called the look -say approach,
and this That may have been the reference that
Dan Stefano was making. Now here, children were
taught to read by having them recognize entire
words as single units, instead of sounding out
the individual letters. Common words were introduced,
then repeated many times in simple sentences
using what's called a controlled vocabulary.
The Dick and Jane series, published by Scott
Forsman and Company from 1930 to 1965, was used
for this. And you can see see some of the scintillating
dialogue from these posts you can listen to it
here it is look dick look jane see baby see see
oh oh oh dick look see see baby there was a lot
of looking and seeing back then and this was
my reading instruction back in 1963 that's the
look -say approach now Sight words. There are
these things called sight words. And I tried
to explain this during the interview. Sight words
are the words that students recognize instantly
on sight without having to use letter cues, word
parts, or context clues. These words can be found
on lists of most common words or most frequent
words that include the 100 to 200 words that
students encounter most often in print. And these
are comprised mostly of function words. That
is, they have little or no lexical meaning. They're
things such as pronouns and prepositions. and
instead they express a grammatical or a structural
relation with other words. There are several
most common word lists. Dolsch, Frey, and Zeno
are the most common, and they're all relatively
similar. It doesn't really matter which one you
use. I tend to use the Zeno word list, and these
are 107. words that students will encounter most
often in text. Now, attention to sight words
should be part of a reading or reading instruction
for beginning readers. And three reasons for
this, for attending to sight words. First, recognizing
words instantly frees up cognitive space that
can be allocated to creating meaning. Second,
words stored in long -term memory can be used
to help students recognize and identify words
in print with similar letter patterns. And third,
having a large store of sight words enhances
reading fluency. Whole language! Whole language
is a language learning theory! Both whole language
and whole word have the word whole in them, but
that's the only similarity. It has nothing to
do with whole word reading. So, whole word reading
instruction. Whole word reading instruction is
not something that I or anybody that I know advocates.
There is no significant whole -word reading instruction
occurring today. It doesn't exist. Oh, maybe
there are seven or eight around the country someplace.
But nonetheless, John Stossel still wanted my
take on something because I was contacted two
months later and flown out to New York City.
So... I want to say up front, I was treated very
respectfully by John Stossel, Dan DeStefano,
and all the staff. And even though the interview
was designed to be one of those gotcha interviews,
I found John and his staff to be respectful during
the questioning in that he allowed me to answer
the questions. And it shows that you can be against
something, you can disagree vehemently, and you
can even have an interview designed to highlight
the flaws or inconsistencies of another. But
you don't have to be disrespectful. So John or
Dan, if you hear this, thank you for that. Thus
said, I have no doubt that the interview will
go through some creative edits, and that I'll
be portrayed in a less than stellar light. And
I know there will be some convenient, inaccurate
things said before or after the interview, and
these things will make me look misguided or even
foolish. I knew this going in. That's how the
game is played. And I'm okay with this for two
reasons. First, it gives me something to write
about. And oddly, I seem to have no shortage
of things to write about lately. And second,
this is illustrative of what's occurring on a
larger level with Emily Hanford and all the Hanford
wannabes. The purpose of these kinds of interviews
is not to transmit information or to understand
the issues. Rather, it's to elicit an emotional
reaction. This, in turn, leads to substantial
speaking fees and other opportunities. And by
the way, I don't think Emily Hanford will be
greatly impacted by cuts in the SNAP program.
A libertarian, John Stossel is described online
as an American libertarian television presenter,
author, consumer, journalist, political activist,
and pundit. I always wondered what a pundit is.
How do you get to be a pundit? Is there a pundit
school someplace? He has a podcast called The
John Stossel Interviews, and I'm guessing this
is where an edited version of our discussion
will appear. Now, to get a sense of John Stossel's
speaking fees, I contacted LAI Speakers, this
is Leading Authorities, Inc. This is a speaking
bureau, and I told the person that I was with
a group called Liberty Minnesota, which is true,
I am with the group, there are like two of us,
and was interested in having John Stossel do
a keynote address. They sent me a quote which
was 75k! And this included expenses and first
-class air travel. Now, I realized two things.
First, making good TV is certainly more lucrative
than being a literacy professor. How silly of
me! to spend five years earning my PhD and 30
years teaching and doing scholarly work, when
I could have been making good TV and doing keynotes
for 75k a pop, and secondly I need to ask for
better airline seats next time. When they flew
me out I was literally in the very last row of
the airplane. So I bring up his 75k speaking
feed, not because I think it's a bad thing. For
75k, I give you a keynote speech and dance like
a chicken. I bring it up because everything in
this science of reading conversation must be
understood in the context of money. Money, whether
received directly or indirectly, is used to influence
reading policy. Those with more money dictate
what information is presented, how it's interpreted,
and how things are perceived. Those with less
money are silenced. So the way to get heard is
really quite simple. more money. Now let's take
a look at the interview. In the next couple podcasts,
I'll be highlighting different parts of this
interview. Right now I'm doing this from memory.
When I see the final interview product, I'll
be able to respond more specifically. But confirmation,
bias, and data resistance. It was clear that
his staff did some background research to prepare
for the interview. It was clear as well that
the staff had a hardy case of confirmation bias.
This occurs when someone begins with strong beliefs
and sees only information that confirms with
their beliefs. In other words, they see what
they're looking for and they don't see what they're
not looking for. In this case, they were looking
for data to show how wrong I was about reading
instruction. And this made them data resistant
to any data that might have showed how right
I was about reading instruction. So, a false
literacy crisis. John Stossel kept insisting,
that there was a literacy crisis, and he would
not be convinced otherwise. After all, he had
a chart in front of him showing such a thing.
And I tried explaining the difference between
norm reference and criterion reference tests.
Norm reference tests compare students' test scores
to a normal population. Test scores of a large
representative sample of students are collected
so that comparisons can be made with students
at similar grade levels. If it's a normal population,
you get the familiar bell -shaped curve. For
example, if Mary was in 3rd grade and her reading
scores were at the 80th percentile, it would
mean that she scored higher than 80 % of all
3rd grade students. And you would know, with
absolute mathematical precision, just how far
she was away from average. In this case, Mary
was 30%. away from average, which is the 50th
percentile. And she was on the good side of that.
Now, if you used a norm reference test with a
bell -shaped curve, by definition, 50 % are above
the median average and 50 % are below the median
average. But that's far different from saying
that 50 % of students are reading below average
or reading below grade level. Instead, 50 % read
below the median average, and this is called
normal and is to be expected in a normal population.
Now the National Assessment of Educational Progress,
NAEP, is part of the U .S. Department of Education.
They've been putting out test data since 1971,
and you can visit their website to get the particulars.
Their norm reference tests are given to students
in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade. Test scores are
broken down by states and subjects as well as
by various subgroups such as race, ethnicity,
SES, gender, and school type. And since the test
is the same, the same test is used, comparisons
can be made over time, as well as between states
and among subgroups. And these are useful in
tracking national trends, but not for assigning
causality. Correlation does not infer causation.
If a test score goes down, you cannot say, ah,
it's because of that. You can't do that. But
if there were a literacy crisis, which there
is not, NAEP data would show a graph with the
scores that looked like a ski hill going down,
or even a slight hill constantly going down.
It would not look like how they are, which is
from 1971 until 2020, scores were consistent
or maybe even rising a little bit. Yes, there
was the natural fluxation of scores, absolutely,
but there simply is no reading crisis. And the
question asked, and then John Stossel asked this,
well, how come they're not getting better? That's
not the way it works, John. That's not the way
they work. So if there's an imaginary test and
the scores were 500, and that's the score range,
you would expect these scores to continually
be climbing all the time? That's just not the
way it works. Now, criterion reference tests.
With criterion reference tests, students are
not compared to a normal population or even an
abnormal population. They're compared to a set
of criteria that somebody has arbitrarily defined.
And these criteria are aspirational, not mathematical.
Meaning they represent what a group of people
has decided that students at each grade level
should be able to know or do. In other words,
they're based on I -THINK -isms. I think third
graders should know this and fourth graders should
know that. And this means that students' achievement
can easily go up or down simply by changing aspirations,
categories, or test content. Thus, you cannot
compare the results from a criterion reference
exam in one state with the results from a criterion
reference test in another state. Two different
tests, two different states, two different criteria,
two different measures, two different populations.
And you cannot compare the results of criterion
reference tests over time if the tests differ,
and they usually do. They change. Okay, this
has been the end of part one. I will give you
some more parts of the John Stossel interview
later. This has been Andy Johnson and this has
been The Reading Instruction Show.