The Reading Crisis is an Educational Justice Crisis
Forging a path where all students thrive as readers requires confronting the causes of inadequate and unequal literacy outcomes
Nearly all students can successfully learn to read. And yet far too many students – across all demographic groups, but especially students from historically marginalized communities – never experience the full promise of literacy success. As Maryanne Wolf writes, such students may never “experience the infinite possibilities within their own thoughts that emerge whole cloth from each fresh encounter with worlds outside their own.” As Alfred Tatum writes, much is at stake here; our students’ lives are on the line and in the absence of taking action, we risk becoming “inadvertent accomplices to the undeserving of students.”
The gap between our present reality and what’s possible for our students is at the heart of “the reading crisis.” And getting to the root of this crisis is important because how we define the problem impacts the solutions we consider, the policies we propose, and the actions we advance. So what’s at the root of inadequate and unequal literacy outcomes? Below I explore two potential diagnoses and their implications for the path forward.
Diagnosis 1: Inadequate and unequal literacy outcomes are the result of ineffective literacy instruction. Per Louisa Moats (2022), “the kids can learn – regardless of race, social class, or economic status. The main problem is that we do not teach them.” Moats names three key explanations for why ineffective literacy instruction persists:
Teacher preparation programs fail to adequately and effectively prepare teachers with the knowledge they need to successfully teach reading. As such, teachers enter their roles underprepared to provide students what they need because they themselves have been ineffectively educated on how to teach reading.
Per Moats (quoting b/c it’s hard to paraphrase with the same punch!!): “Faulty ideas about learning to read are deeply engrained in teacher culture and are perpetuated by publishers who will sell whatever consumers will buy, regardless of evidence for effectiveness.” As such, romantic ideas about reading developing naturally and the marketization of reading reform trump the evidence base on what skillful reading — and skillful teaching of reading — requires.
The complex and challenging nature of teaching reading is misunderstood and underestimated. Per Moats’s refrain, teaching reading really *is* rocket science. But in the absence of providing teachers the support, development, and professional care they require, school systems allow preventable reading failure to persist for far too many students.
Given this diagnosis of the problem, Moats is clear-eyed about the solution she believes is required to reverse historical trends of reading failure: an overhaul of teacher preparation and professional development that would equip teachers of reading with a robust grounding in the science of reading, so that they have the knowledge, skills, and systems of support to successfully teach their students to read.
Diagnosis 2: Inadequate and unequal literacy outcomes are the result of systemic inequities that impact marginalized students’ access to effective literacy instruction. As many scholars have argued, so-called achievement gaps reflect yawning disparities in access to educational opportunity. Linda Darling-Hammond (2010) pulls apart the “anatomy of inequality,” noting that both poverty and segregation are implicated in the persistence of educational “gaps” and that unequal outcomes are rooted in the unequal distribution of school resources, unequal access to quality teachers and teaching, and “rationing” of high-quality curriculum. The latter calls to mind the concept of educational redlining. As discussed by Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Dr. Dr. Sonja Santelises, systemic disinvestment in communities of color continues within the walls of our schools when marginalized students are denied access to rigorous curriculum, provided low-level tasks, and shunted into low-level reading groups. Too often such practices are authorized in schools and across districts without question or concern, normalized even as they sustain an uneven playing field rather than serve to equalize it.
It’s not hard to visualize what happens to students in the classrooms Darling-Hammond or Santelises describe where marginalized students are effectively excluded from experiencing quality education. But what happens when such students do find themselves in classrooms with teachers trained to use “effective” pedagogy, yet that pedagogy still fails to meet their needs? Writing specifically about the plight of Black students, Gail Thompson and Cynthia Shamberger (2015) write:
Nationwide, countless teachers trained to use good teaching strategies continue to fail to meet the academic needs of many Black students. What is missing from the equation is the connection between teachers’ beliefs about Black students and Black students’ achievement.
Thompson and Shamberger continue:
Teachers who do not believe that Black students can become good readers will subconsciously engage in ineffective practices and create a classroom climate that is designed to make this belief reality. Conversely, teachers who are willing to improve their relations with Black students are more likely to be able to work successfully with them.
Moving from problem to solution, Moats’s proposed solution now appears a piece of the puzzle rather than the whole thing; for in the absence of culturally responsive instruction and equally high expectations for the success of all students, disparities in reading outcomes will persist.
In the contemporary science of reading movement, literacy is often framed as an issue of equity and justice. Yet moving beyond the rhetoric of equity in order to achieve it requires advocating BOTH for the advancement of evidence-based curriculum, instructional practice, and professional learning and support AND for confronting the inequitable structures, practices, and beliefs that reinforce and exacerbate disparities in reading outcomes. Illiteracy is a problem that impacts students of all racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and linguistic backgrounds; but in U.S. schools, it will continue to disproportionately impact marginalized students unless we dismantle the barriers that block them from achieving their full potential as readers, writers, and thinkers. Until we do so, both illiteracy and the educational injustice at its root will persist.
References
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. Teachers College Press.
Moats, L. (2022). Commentary: Teaching expertise is the best antidote for educational inequities. School Psychology, 38(1), 42-43.
Tatum, A. (2021). Teaching Black boys in the elementary grades: Advanced disciplinary reading and writing to secure their futures. Teachers College Press.
Thompson, G. L. & Shamberger, C. T. (2015). The gift that can save lives: Teaching Black students to become good readers. Journal of Research Initiatives, 1(2), 1-10.
Wolf, M. (2019). Reader, come home: The reading brain in a digital world. Harper.
Loved this piece. Where I thought you were heading with this is a framework that emphasizes 1) what teachers control in their approach to instruction and 2) what's outside of their control, e.g., poverty and family characteristics. Kylene Beers's new edition of When Kids Can't Read has some of the most heart wrenching stories about how her own inadequate preparation and teaching failed one of her first students named George. It's a kind of candor we rarely see in the field.
I have heard A LOT of reference to the "Science of Reading" but I don't know where to access the studies and research upon which this science is based. One of the weaknesses I see in educational research is the ineffective attempts to quantify the inherently qualitative practice of learning. Data that can be useful in the macro is frequently brought to the individual student and becomes meaningless.
In short: What published research can I find that makes up the science of reading?
Thank you