To: Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam, Superintendents Gloria Buckery, Kathleen Cashin, Judith Chin, Carmen Farina, Michelle Fratti, Shelley Harwayne, Reyes Irizarry, Laura Rodriguez, Helen Santiago, Lucille Swarns, Irma Zardoya

Cc: Mayor Michael Bloomberg

From: Professors and Researchers in Reading in NYC and the Greater NYC Region: Linnea Ehri, Bruce McCandliss, Dolores Perin, Hollis Scarborough, Sally Shaywitz, Joanna Williams, Joanna Uhry

Re: Selection of a Systematic Phonics Program for NYC Students

We are local New York Area professors and researchers writing to offer our assistance. We are pleased that you have placed literacy at the top of your goals agenda. Providing effective reading instruction to NYC students is critically important. We applaud your efforts to improve teachers' success in teaching literacy and to assist students in becoming skilled readers and writers.

We offer our help as local experts with extensive knowledge of reading and reading instruction. We have conducted scientifically based studies with children, adolescents, and adults to understand how they learn to read, why some have difficulties, and which types of programs are most effective for teaching reading. Three of us recently served on the congressionally mandated National Reading Panel and reviewed research findings to identify effective approaches for teaching reading at the elementary school level. Some of us are serving on committees at the federal level involving the No Child Left Behind legislation. We strongly support the use of research based programs to teach reading. We have no vested interest in any particular program. We are available and willing to contribute in whatever way you might find useful.

In this letter, we offer an analysis of the Month by Month Phonics Program. According to our research and professional consensus, the program does offer teachers some engaging activities to supplement instruction, but it falls short as an effective systematic phonics program. Its effectiveness has not been validated scientifically. In the absence of evidence, we examined its structure and content to see whether it conforms to research based practices. As you will see by our analysis, the program is woefully inadequate for many reasons. It lacks the ingredients of a systematic phonics program. It places an unrealistic burden on teachers for making decisions about designing lesson materials, and it does not provide teachers with any useful guidance for helping students who fall behind. It does not give teachers a research-based framework for understanding the activities they are told to use and why they are useful. Because it lacks a research base, it is not likely to qualify for federal funding. Most importantly, it puts beginning readers at risk of failure in learning to read.

NYC schools have varying needs making it likely that one phonics program will not fit all. For example, schools with large numbers of ELL students would benefit most from a phonics program that teaches the meaning of words more extensively than MM does. Schools with Special Education populations would benefit most from an intensive systematic, explicit phonics program. In some schools, teachers have already learned to use an acceptable, research-based systematic phonics program that does the job, so continued use should be supported. We see many good reasons why schools should be offered a choice among research-based systematic phonics programs. There are several commercial programs to be considered. If you desire additional expertise, we are available to help in identifying these and assessing their merits.

HOW THE MONTH BY MONTH (MM) PROGRAM FALLS SHORT

1. Evidence.

The effectiveness of the MM program has not been validated scientifically. No controlled experiments have been published using this approach. The program booklets report student performance in a few districts using the program, but no control groups were included for comparison. The MM program lists some publications that were used in its development (see First Grade booklet, p. 124), but no experiments are cited showing the effectiveness of ingredients of this program. Selecting an untested program for one of the largest cities in the US is risky and ill-advised, especially when there are reasons to doubt its effectiveness and when there are other stronger programs available that have been tested or that utilize tested methods.

2. Systematic Phonics Ingredients

Despite its claims, the MM program does not teach essential ingredients of a phonics program comprehensively or systematically. This puts beginning readers at risk of failure in acquiring the foundation they need at the outset in learning to read. No systematic way to teach alphabet letters in kindergarten is offered. The alphabetic system is not taught explicitly or thoroughly in first grade. Rhyme awareness is emphasized rather than phonemic awareness yet research has shown that teaching children to segment and blend the smallest sounds in words (phonemic awareness) is more crucial in learning to read and spell. The awareness activities that are offered in MM focus on rhyming, a low-level skill more appropriate for preschoolers. The vowel spelling system is not taught. No schedule for covering all the letters and major letter-sound relations is included. We have provided a more extensive explanation of our concerns regarding ingredients of the First Grade Program in an Appendix following this letter.

3. Teacher Knowledge

We agree with you that we do not want "cookie cutter" teachers. It is critical that teachers understand the beginning reading process and why they are using particular activities. The MM program provides many activities for teachers to perform with students but does not give teachers an adequate, research based framework for understanding what they are doing and why. The program presumes a great deal of teacher knowledge. Many critical decisions regarding coverage of essential skills are left to teachers to decide yet the skills at each phase and their rationale are not made clear. This places an unrealistic burden on teachers to make the decisions that matter most in delivering effective instruction. Background and details about content and instruction ought to be spelled out more fully in an effective program, especially for teachers who are less experienced or knowledgeable in teaching reading. We would expect an effective program to specify this information rather than rely on teachers to fill in the gaps or rely on supplementary, patchwork materials provided by professional developers.

4. Cost

It is not clear that the MM program is less costly than other programs. In order to implement this program, more than just the four kindergarten through 3rd grade booklets must be purchased. Exercises described in the booklets require the purchase of additional materials, such as other published books for students to read and other reference books to help teachers complete the development of lessons that are only illustrated in the booklets. Also, teachers must be taught to use the program, so there will be substantial staff development costs as well.

INGREDIENTS OF A STRONG, SYSTEMATIC, RESEARCH-BASED PHONICS PROGRAM

Research indicates that a strong phonics program should include several ingredients. In evaluating candidate programs, these criteria should be applied.

-- Programs should insure coverage of the alphabetic system by teaching phonemic awareness that includes segmentation and blending activities, by teaching the shapes, names, and sounds of letters, and by specifying a sequence and schedule for teaching the major letter-sound relations.

-- Programs should teach children to read unfamiliar words by breaking the words into letter-sound parts and blending the parts to pronounce meaningful words.

-- Programs should help children build a sight vocabulary by teaching them to match letters to sounds within the words and to recognize their meanings.

-- Programs should provide spelling instruction and practice.

-- At the beginning levels, programs should provide reading materials that allow children to apply the letter-sound knowledge that they have been taught. A common approach is to provide specially written books containing a high proportion of words that children can decode.

--A systematic phonics program should be regarded as one part of a comprehensive, integrated program to teach literacy effectively.

NEED FOR A STRONG SYSTEMATIC PHONICS PROGRAM IN NEW YORK CITY

To become skilled readers, children need to begin by learning how to break spoken words into sounds and how letters stand for these sounds. The letter-sound system in English is more complex than it is in some other languages, so systematic instruction is especially important to help children learn the system. Many NYC children enter school without any letter knowledge, so full and effective coverage is essential. It cannot be left to chance or to the vagaries of an under-specified program. In order to achieve the goal of leaving no child behind, strong effective programs need to be implemented.

RECOMMENDATIONS

We suggest that you consider taking the following steps:

1. Evaluate and identify a small number of carefully selected, research-based comprehensive systematic phonics programs that would suit different needs of students, teachers and schools.

2. Make the MM program available to teachers as a supplementary program but not one of the core systematic phonics programs.

We are happy to provide further advice and guidance as you address these issues and make decisions. Please feel free to call on us for a more thorough analysis of this program as well as other programs. We do not have any vested interest in seeing NYC adopt any particular program. Our interest is in insuring that whatever programs are selected offer the best chance of success for teachers and students and make it possible for no child to be left behind.

Sincerely yours,

Linnea C. Ehri, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology and Speech and Hearing Sciences, Graduate Center of the City University of New York; former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading; member of the National Reading Panel. Telephone: 212-817-8294; email: LEhri@gc.cuny.edu.

Bruce McCandliss, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Sackler Institute, Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. Telephone: 212-746-5837; email: bdm2001@med.cornell.edu.

Dolores Perin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University; Coordinator of the Reading Specialist Program. Telephone: 212-678-3943; email: dp111@columbia.edu.

Hollis Scarborough, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Educational Psychology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York; Senior Research

Scientist at Haskins Laboratories; member of the National Research Council committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children. Email: Hscarborough@prodigy.net.

Sally Shaywitz, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Child Study, Yale University School of Medicine; co-Director of the Yale Center for the

Study of Learning and Attention; member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; member of the National Reading Panel; member of the National Research Council committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children; chair, No Child Left Behind Reading First review panel. Telephone: 203-785-4641; email: sally.shaywitz@yale.edu.

Joanna Williams, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University; President-elect of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, member of the National Reading Panel. Telephone: 212-678-3832; email: jpw15@columbia.edu.

Joanna Uhry, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Fordham University; chair,

Division of Curriculum and Teaching; Faculty coordinator of Programs in Childhood Education. Telephone: 212-636-6446; email: uhry@fordham.edu.

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Appendix: EVALUATION OF MM PHONICS FOR FIRST GRADE

In this Appendix, we explain more thoroughly some of the shortcomings of the MM Phonics program for first grade. We are especially concerned about implementing a high quality, first-grade phonics program because it is essential for novice beginners to get off to a strong start in learning to read. Findings of the National Reading Panel Report make this clear. The MM program contains several activities that are engaging for teachers and children and that hold promise of helping students gain practice in reading and spelling words. However, the instructional techniques in the program are weak and the content is not comprehensive. These are particularly serious shortcomings for NYC children, many of whom enter kindergarten and first grade as non-readers with little knowledge of letters or print.

1. ALPHABETIC BUILDING BLOCKS.

The MM phonics instruction is woefully inadequate for beginners. The alphabetic building blocks of learning to read are not taught in powerful ways that maximize the likelihood that children will learn them.

a. There is no plan or schedule for teaching the major letter-sound correspondences of English and for insuring that all of them are covered and practiced until learned. Which ones are covered and practiced is left for the most part to teachers to decide.

b. The hardest letter-sound correspondences to learn in English are vowels which are not taught separately in the MM program. Rather they are taught implicitly as embedded parts of many different spelling patterns. Most systematic phonics programs teach children to distinguish short and long vowel letter-sound relations explicitly, an approach that takes much less time to learn and enables children to read and spell vowels sooner with much greater accuracy.

c. The MM program does not take advantage of mnemonic (memory enhancing) devices to help children remember letter-sound relations, another approach that research has shown speeds up learning and makes it more secure. A mnemonic approach involves teaching children easy-to-remember associations linking letter shapes to their sounds, for example, drawing S as a snake whose initial sound /s/ is the sound of the letter, or drawing U as depicting a pair of arms held up in the air with the initial sound of up as the sound of the letter. In the MM program, such memory-enhancing devices are not employed yet these are especially useful for struggling learners.

d. Phonemic awareness instruction is another critical ingredient in kindergarten and first grade phonics programs. Research shows that teaching it helps children learn to read, particularly when children are encouraged to break words into their smallest sounds (phonemes), and to blend sounds to form words. However, phoneme segmentation and blending are not taught in the MM program. Rather the focus is upon rhyme instruction. The shared endings of rhyming words are blends of phonemes, not single phonemes. The MM program is inaccurate when it refers to this as phonemic awareness instruction.

e. The MM program fails to take advantage of recent research findings indicating how sight words are learned. MM teaches students to read words using the Word Wall by having children chant and cheer letter names in the words and by drawing attention to word shapes. Teachers are not informed that they can help students learn sight words more effectively by teaching them to analyze letter-sound correspondences within the words.

f. The MM program teaches children about spelling patterns in words without prior work teaching the letter-sound correspondences making up the patterns. This conflicts with research indicating that learning patterns is much easier if children learn the letter-sound relations first.

g. The MM program includes word building activities shown by research to help children learn to read. However, only a handful of sequences for children to practice are identified in the materials, not enough to fill all the time set aside for this activity. Teachers are told to create additional sequences yet they are not given any design principles for doing so. This is a difficult and time consuming task and hence is unrealistic to expect of teachers. It is important to note that providing a tiny handful of examples does not constitute a systematic phonics program.

2. TEACHER KNOWLEDGE. In MM, teachers are not taught what they need to know about the alphabetic system to be able to explain its structure and enable students to utilize these regularities to read and write words. Research has shown that many teachers do not know about dividing words into phonemes, about the difference between short and long vowel spelling patterns, and about the six basic types of syllables in English. Teachers who understand these spelling-sound regularities in English are better able to teach phonics effectively.

3. READING TEXT.

The MM program falls short in helping beginners use their phonics knowledge to read text. Text reading is left to another part of the curriculum unrelated to phonics instruction. Research has shown that under these circumstances children do not apply what they have learned about phonics.

4. ASSESSMENT.

The program includes suggestions for assessing children's progress through the year, but its purpose it simply to observe progress rather than to inform and enhance instruction. The program offers no specific suggestions for how to teach students who have made inadequate progress and what sorts of special instruction should be provided to help struggling readers. It simply tells teachers to use "practice, nudging and coaching."

5. CLASS vs. GROUP INSTRUCTION.

The MM program acknowledges that first graders vary greatly in their reading and writing skills yet few if any lessons are delivered to small groups and tailored to their specific needs. Most instruction and activities are conducted with the whole class. This inevitably goes over the heads of the weaker students.

6. SUPPLEMENTARY VALUE.

The program does describe several useful, engaging activities such as incorporating children's names into instruction. These activities could prove useful for supplementing a more structured, comprehensive phonics program to teach beginning reading. The authors even acknowledge this when they say to users, "We hope you find these activities healthy and tasty additions to the balanced literacy diet you are providing your fledgling readers and writers." (First Grade booklet, p. 3)

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