Dr. Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus San Diego State University, has published over 325 books, monographs, and journal articles and is a nationally known expert in the field of reading instruction.

Louisa C. Moats earned a doctorate in reading education at Harvard University, under the guidance of the renowned education professor Jeanne Chall. Chall is best known for her 1967 book, Learning to Read: The Great Debate, and its 1983 update.

Here, Chall reports that experimental findings up to those dates corroborate that direct, intensive, systematic, early, and comprehensive (DISEC) instruction, of a prearranged hierarchy of discrete reading skills (particularly, how to apply phonics information to recognize written words), is the most effective beginning reading tuition. Chall's books confirm prior conclusions to that effect by Rudolf Flesch in his 1955 best seller, Why Johnny Can't Read.

At present, Moats is director of a multiyear study, at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), as to what constitutes the most effectual early reading instruction. Her past work includes service as a consultant on reading instruction with schools and state agencies, and as a college professor of reading education. Moats also has written numerous books, book chapters, and journal articles on that topic.

It is notable that in 2000 the NICHD published the Report of the National Reading Panel (RNRP). The 14-member Panel considered the findings of over 100,000 relevant experimental investigations in its determination of how reading instruction is conducted in the most time-effective manner possible. None of the unique principles nor novel practices of the Whole Language (WL) approach to the development of children's reading ability is corroborated by the RNRP.

Despite this shortcoming, WL reading teaching "lives on," Moats explains. She observes that WL reading teaching remains popular despite the documented evidence that its non DISEC approach to reading teaching is a cardinal reason why public school students' standardized reading test scores remain at a deplorably low level. Larger and larger amounts of funds allocated in the past decade to improve these scores have not been successful in doing so.

Moats acknowledges that one aspect in WL advocates' systematic denial of full opportunity to students to learn to read is obvious. It is public schools' refusal to "utilize 'best practices' [in reading instruction] that are supported by scientific research." The result of this irrational stubbornness by government schools is a huge waste of public funds squandered on WL reading teaching, and "millions of children needlessly classified as [reading] disabled."

Public schools' obstinacy in this regard is encouraged by "a pervasive lack of rigor in university education departments" as to what legitimately constitutes reading research, what are proper courses and textbooks for future reading teachers, and what are appropriate state reading teacher licensing requirements. Also, education journals such as those of the International Reading Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English, are filled with complimentary articles on WL teaching. Worse yet, "many state standards and curricular frameworks still reflect whole-language ideas."

Beyond this, "incarnations [of WL] such as Reading Recovery" (RR) stimulate the continuance of favor for WL by schools. These imitators of WL "covertly embody whole-language ideas." This helps explain why disinterested studies of the relative effectiveness of the highly-costly tutoring scheme called RR "did not produce accelerated reading performance." It even is found that RR students exhibit "more classroom behavior problems" than do students not assigned to it.

Once the distressing failures of WL reading teaching were repeatedly exposed by the mass media, leaders of the WL movement conveniently disguised their instructional innovation by calling it balanced reading teaching. Moats notes that balanced reading tutelage implies that "worthy ideas and practices from both whole-language and code-emphasis [DISEC phonics instruction] approaches have been successfully integrated."

That is an impossible amalgamation to enact, Moats rightly concludes, since every novel "premise advanced by whole language about how reading is learned has been contradicted by scientific investigations." Thus, "a marriage" of "reading science and whole-language ideology" probably "cannot and should not be" consummated, Moats sagely maintains. That being the case, to be logical, teachers must make a forced-choice between the unique principles and novel practices of WL reading pedagogy, and those based on experimental findings.

In sum, Moats does a masterful job in describing in detail "what whole language is," even though she grants that WL at one time "defied definition by those who attempted to study it objectively." She also aptly describes how WL is "contradicted by scientific studies, and how it continues in education."

She is not as successful, however, in specifically delineating why classroom teachers, their educators in universities, public school officials, and state departments of education were so easily seduced by WL mavens to abandon or ignore what experimental studies reveal is the most effective manner in which to teach students to read. To this effect, Moats does observe that the WL theory is "readily embraced by progressive educators." Long before the advent of WL they expressed faith in the WL principles about child-centered classrooms, and the "discovery" (indirect, unsystematic) method of teaching.

Moats implies that a large number of educators were besmitten by progressive education ideals before the appearance of WL in the 1970s. Why else was it that educators since the 1970s have "rushed to embrace" WL? It is "a set of [scientifically] unfounded ideas and practices, without any evidence [on hand] that children would learn to read better, earlier, or in greater numbers" through it than before. In their "love affair with whole language," progressive educators unsurprisingly "were easily persuaded" that scientific data "had little to offer them" regarding reading instruction. As a result, reading "skill building and skill instruction" were readily cast aside by progressive-minded teachers as "boring, isolated, meaningless, and dreadful" practices.

It appears Moats suggests that teachers, education professors, school officials, and state departments of education largely remain progressive in their outlook on reading instruction, i.e., are opposed ideologically to DISEC reading teaching. Assuming that is true, the "sufficient attention" to "righting reading instruction" in the nation, that Moats calls for, may not be forthcoming. It thus remains an empirical question whether every state will:

1. Set reading performance standards "explicitly based on [experimental] findings";
2. Conduct assessments of reading ability "calibrated to show the effects of reading instruction";
3. Provide "meaningful and effective remediation" for students who read below grade-level, and "disband" schools that fail to teach students to read;
4. Eliminate test items that favor WL reading teaching from teacher licensing examinations;
5. Establish reading teacher education programs at universities that do not promote WL instruction;
6. Abolish tenure for professors of reading education, while assigning them as "partners" with other departments at universities;
7. Adopt only reading instruction textbooks that are closely aligned with relevant experimental evidence; and
8. Encourage journalists and policymakers to "closely examine" the so-called "balanced reading" programs in public schools so as to inform the public of their nature.

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