In recent years, the New York Times has covered the “science of reading” story like a glove. (See for example, here, here, here and here.) But based on the articles in the Times and most other publications, you’d be likely to conclude that the only “science” related to reading was about the benefits of teaching kids phonics.

To be clear, systematic phonics instruction is crucial. It’s just not enough to equip kids to be good readers at higher grade levels. Studies show that the benefits of reforms focused on phonics and other foundational reading skills generally disappear after fifth grade.

What becomes important at higher grade levels is the knowledge and vocabulary that, as cognitive science tells us, students need to understand increasingly complex text. That knowledge should be built through the curriculum starting in kindergarten if not before. Early knowledge-building is crucial for later success, especially for kids who are less likely to pick up academic knowledge outside school.

An increasing number of elementary schools across the country have been adopting curricula that focus on building knowledge, and teachers in those schools often see students exceed their expectations on a daily basis. But, with a very few exceptions, you wouldn’t know that from the plethora of news stories about the “science of reading” that have come out in the last several years.

Earlier this month, though, there was a stop-the-presses moment for those of us who have been advocating for knowledge-building curricula: the Times devoted a full seven paragraphs to describing what building knowledge looks like in the classroom and why it’s important.

Fifth graders discuss the Renaissance

National education correspondent Dana Goldstein gave readers a window into a Louisiana school serving a low-income population, where “a diverse group of fifth-graders sat, rapt, as their teacher, Lauren Cascio, introduced a key insight: that the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation all occurred during the same period of human history.”

Goldstein catalogued vocabulary words students were learning, like skepticism and heliocentric, and reported that they discussed Leonardo da Vinci and wrote about “how the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo differed from those of the ancient Greeks.” She noted that kids were using actual books and pencils rather than digital devices.

She also mentioned the Knowledge Matters Campaign, which has been advocating for knowledge-building curricula for almost a decade, and observed that some of the attention to phonics “has now shifted to additional aspects of literacy instruction that are backed by cognitive science,” like the importance of building knowledge through social studies and science. (I serve on the board of the parent organization of the Knowledge Matters Campaign.)

Kudos to Goldstein for her coverage. Still, seven paragraphs for a movement this potentially game-changing and complex is far from enough. True, Goldstein’s piece was a sweeping survey of the state of education reform, and her primary point was that both parties have essentially given up on it. I get that. In that context, seven paragraphs on knowledge-building is a lot. But I hope that she or one of her colleagues at the Times will return to the topic for a deeper dive, because there’s a lot more to say.

Literacy curriculum is where the action is

Like what? Well, for one thing, Times readers might not realize how unusual that fifth-grade classroom was. Although Goldstein was focusing on reading, she was describing a social studies class—and one that was using a new curriculum, Bayou Bridges, created by the state of Louisiana. Few fifth-graders in the US are learning about Copernicus and Galileo. The typical elementary social studies curriculum is pretty anemic and extremely light on history. And many elementary schools barely teach the subject at all.

On the other hand, more and more of them are adopting literacy curricula that incorporate topics from history and science as well as covering literature. I’d love to see elementary schools cut back on the “reading” block—which is typically two or even three hours a day—and devote more time to social studies, especially if they had a rich curriculum like Bayou Bridges.

But it’s almost impossible to get schools to do that. Literacy curricula that cover historical topics are an end run around that problem, and at this point they’re a more realistic solution. That’s actually where the curriculum action is these days, something that’s not mentioned in the Times article.

Share

Knowledge-building literacy curricula also take an approach to reading comprehension that’s very different from the one that has dominated schools for decades and to a large extent still does. The typical approach is to put isolated comprehension skills like “making inferences” in the foreground, using texts on random topics or stories to try to teach the skills.

In contrast, knowledge-building literacy curricula put a text or topic in the foreground and bring in whatever skills are appropriate to help students understand it. That’s another important piece of context that rarely gets mentioned in education coverage. (And please, let’s put to rest the claim that teachers have to choose between building knowledge and teaching comprehension strategies; it’s not a question of either-or, but rather what the primary focus is.)

I’d also like to see the Times, or some other media outlet with ample resources, try to figure out how many schools are actually using this new kind of literacy curriculum and how fast their numbers are growing. Believe it or not, there’s little reliable data on that. But judging from the number of requests I’ve gotten for speaking engagements to address this topic over the past five years, the movement has been spreading rapidly.

I can only hope that Goldstein’s glimpse of that one impressive classroom in Louisiana has piqued her curiosity, and that we’ll soon be seeing more in-depth coverage. There are a lot of classrooms out there where kids are doing amazing things.

A deeper dive into the topic

For those who’d like to know more, right now, about the school district in Louisiana that provided the scene for Goldstein’s vignette—and are curious about why this is happening in Louisiana—I recommend a recent piece in the publication Ed Week.

The piece appears in a column belonging to education commentator Rick Hess, but it was written by Matthew Levey. Levey, who has a varied background that includes founding a charter school, is working with the Knowledge Matters Campaign on a new initiative called the History Matters Campaign, and in that capacity he visited the elementary school in Ouachita Parish that Goldstein briefly described. (You can also see videos from the visit on the website of the Knowledge Matters Campaign.)

Levey’s piece provides significantly more detail about what’s going on at that school—and in the state as a whole. He explains that the district is not only using Bayou Bridges but also two knowledge-building literacy curricula, Core Knowledge Language Arts in K-2 and Louisiana Guidebooks in grades three through eight, and he notes that using the three curricula together results in beneficial synergies.

Levey also provides illuminating background on how Louisiana has been able to pull off a statewide shift to knowledge-building curricula. Thanks to a visionary former state superintendent of education, John White, the process started over a decade ago and has put Louisiana in the vanguard of the knowledge movement. Last year I visited a district adjacent to Ouachita, Monroe City—where the population is 80 percent economically disadvantaged—and saw some impressive things happening there too. (I wrote about that visit in my new book, Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning.)

The process of change in Louisiana has been delicate and complex—a lot more complex than the “teaching phonics” narrative that many media outlets offered as an explanation for Louisiana’s improved reading scores on the most recent round of national tests, in the midst of a general decline. There’s much that other states and the general public could learn from a journalistic deep dive into Louisiana’s strategy.

Teachers showing courage

One of the complexities attendant on this kind of change is that many teachers, through no fault of their own, don’t know much themselves about some of the topics covered in the knowledge-building curricula they’re expected to use. Our education system hasn’t done a great job of teaching history and science for decades, and the result is that we’re trying to fix a broken system with teachers who are themselves products of that system.

That can lead to a lot of discomfort. It’s intimidating to be asked to teach topics you aren’t familiar with—and it can be painful to admit what you don’t know.

Levey relates a poignant anecdote about a teacher who spoke up at a community meeting—in front of her principal, the district superintendent, and the chair of the local board of education—and confessed that before she learned how to teach the content-rich curriculum her school was using, she knew little about the colonial era. “I thought,” she told the assembled audience, “the Boston Tea Party was a party.”

It takes courage to make that kind of public acknowledgment. And one of the great largely untold stories in education is about the many courageous educators who are plunging ahead every day, adjusting to a very different way of teaching and sometimes exposing their vulnerabilities, all for the sake of their students.

So if any education reporters out there are looking for a great story that combines human interest with potentially transformational societal changes, please spend some time—and more than seven paragraphs—looking into what’s going on in the many districts that have undertaken this challenging but immensely fulfilling work.