Presenting “Sold a Story”

In The Dark

The New Yorker

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 28.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the Dark presents the first episode of “Sold a Story,” an award-winning investigative podcast that is changing how children are taught to read. In this episode, “The Problem,” a mother watches her son's first-grade lessons during Zoom school and discovers with dismay that he can’t read. Her son isn’t the only one: more than a third of fourth graders in the United States can’t read on even a basic level. In “Sold a Story,” the host, Emily Hanford, exposes how educators came to believe in a method of teaching reading that doesn’t work, and are now reckoning with the consequences.

“Sold a Story” is available wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at soldastory.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Madeline. I'd like to ask for your help with something. We're currently conducting a survey of our audience, and we want to hear from you as a listener of In the Dark. This is one of the best ways for us to learn about what you value as a listener, and it's a chance for you to help shape the future of our podcast. We want to hear from you. As a token of our appreciation, you'll be eligible to enter a prize drawing of up to $1,000 after you complete the survey. You can find links to the survey in our episode and show notes. Thanks for listening.
0:32.7	Hey, in the dark listeners, it's Madeline. I'm coming to you today because I wanted to bring you another
0:38.1	podcast I think you would really enjoy. It's done by a former colleague of mine, an amazing reporter
0:43.5	named Emily Hanford at American Public Media. And it's all about how the way that so many children
0:48.9	in our country are taught to read is just wrong. This reporting has had a huge impact. It's now changing the way that
0:55.9	reading is taught in classrooms across the country. The podcast is called Sold a Story, and we're
1:01.6	going to play the first episode for you here. Here's the show. Guide dogs lead very interesting
1:07.7	lies. For 10 or 12 years, they are in charge of guiding a blind person.
1:13.6	I got this recording from the U.S. Department of Education. They give a reading test every two years
1:19.6	to a sample of kids. Most guide dogs are born at a kennel.
1:23.6	This is a fourth grader who did well on the test, reading a passage about guide dogs.
1:29.4	The dogs train in large groups for about three months.
1:33.0	But most kids don't do well on this test.
1:36.3	Dogs are...
1:38.3	In fact, a third of fourth graders read so poorly, they sound more like this.
1:45.3	This child gets through only a fraction of the passage and can't read several words that are key to understanding what's going on.
2:05.6	Words like guide and blind.
2:09.6	One in three kids in fourth grade reads like this. How did that happen?
2:23.4	I'm Emily Hanford. I'm an education reporter. And about five years ago, I started to get really
2:29.6	interested in why so many kids are having a hard time learning to read.
2:35.0	And what I discovered is that in schools all over this country, and in other parts of the world, too,
2:41.0	kids are not being taught how to read.
	...

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