The Fight Over Phonics

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

About 50 years ago, the educator Lucy Calkins pioneered a technique called balanced literacy, which de-emphasized the use of phonics to teach reading. It was widely adopted in the United States, including in New York, the country’s largest public school system. But doubts about the approach persisted, and now it seems that using balanced literacy has given a generation of American students the wrong tools. Dana Goldstein, who covers family policy and demographics for The Times, discusses the story of balanced literacy and how Professor Calkins is trying to fix the problems that the technique created. Guest: Dana Goldstein, a national correspondent for The New York Times who writes about family policy and demographics.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is the Daily.
0:06.1	The New York City Department of Education says in 2019 only 53% of third grade students
0:10.4	were proficient in reading. That rate fell to 49% in 2022.
0:15.1	And that is why the city says it announced plans today to dramatically change the way
0:19.1	children are taught to read.
0:21.1	A few weeks ago, the nation's largest public school system, New York City, abandoned its current
0:26.9	system for teaching kids how to read.
0:29.5	This isn't just in New York. This is all across the nation.
0:32.1	80% of the kids in Chicago do not read on grade level.
0:35.5	Indeed, Troy, 91% do not read on grade level.
0:39.6	It was the latest and biggest acknowledgement to date that a generation of American students
0:45.8	has been given the wrong tools to achieve literacy.
0:50.2	This is a national problem and it's the educational crisis of our time.
0:55.4	Today, my colleague, Dana Goldstein, on the influential educator who helped create those
1:02.4	flawed tools and is now trying to fix the problems that they created.
1:09.0	It's Tuesday, June 6th.
1:12.0	Dana.
1:19.3	Good morning, Michael.
1:20.3	Good morning.
1:21.3	I can see that you've brought some books and I think we're going to need them.
1:24.3	So thank you for doing that.
1:26.6	We're here to talk about how kids learn to read in the United States.
	...

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