by Dr. Patrick Groff
Professor of Education Emeritus
San Diego State University

1. The overweaning goal of the TRF is to make sure that "90% of our students will read at or above grade level by the end of third grade." In short, TRF sets out to determine that the "instructional level" averages of "basic reading tests," published by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NEA), can be altered in a radically upward fashion.

   In spite of this effort by TRF to disprove the suitablity of the norms (averages) of the NEA reading tests, it continues to maintain that they have "appropriate validity and reliability." To the contrary, however, if the average student performance on NEA tests becomes 90, rather than 50 percent, the tests' scores no longer can be legitimately "correlated to national means" (averages), nor accurately "compared" to "national means, medians, stanines, and percentiles." It thus is misleading for TRF to contend that NEA "scores can be translated to grade-level equivalents" at the point 90 percent of students are reading "at or above grade level" on these tests.

2. Relevant experimental evidence consistently indicates that the method used to teach grade K-3 students to read is the most effective predictor available as to what will be the extent of their success in this endeavor. In sum, empirically validated methodology is more productive in this respect than are the number of hours spent teaching reading.

   These findings are rejected by TRF, which encourages state legislators to say to school districts, "We don't care about your methodology" in reading instruction, but only "that substantially all of our third graders can read at grade level." Any lawmaker making this statement would be guilty of both misunderstanding the standardized measurement of reading skills, plus the imperative nature of effective reading instruction.

   To the question, "What instructional programs do you recommend?" TRF answers: "None." Even more curious is that TRF chooses to quote Kenneth Goodman as an expert on this issue. He is a founder of the experimentally invalidated Whole Language (WL) approach to reading teaching. Neither he, nor advocates of direct and systematic reading pedagogy agree with TRF's notion that it is appropriate for a school to "use any combination of instructional approaches to reading" development it chooses.

   Nonetheless, TRF stresses that "no one method" of teaching reading should be "imposed by the [school] district administration." An example of this indifferent attitude toward teaching quality is TRF's approval of teachers who diametrically disagree as to whether (a) direct, intensive, systematic, early, and comprehensive (DISEC) instruction of a prearranged hierarchy of discrete reading skills and knowledges should be conducted, as versus whether (b) use of the WL nonDISEC instruction should prevail.

3. At times, however, TRF contradicts itself regarding its disinterest in the relative merit of these two opposite instuctional practices. In one of the most confounding statements made by TRF, it argues that teachers must adopt "strategies and methods that emphasize structuring a balanced approach from the many different pedagogical methods available." Almost every word in this sentence cries out for an enabling explication.

   Especially troubling in this respect, is TRF's notion that future teachers, or even veteran inservice ones, for that matter, can master, and then recall when needed, all the details of all the reading methods available. Over the past century alone, almost every conceivable manner in which children might be taught to read has been recommended, at one time or another. The saving grace is that a great majority of these schemes were shown to have no scientific substance, and eventually lost favor among the educational establishment.

   Next, it must be asked of TRF, how are teachers to keep under control the numerous pedagogical details it recommends must be kept in a "balanced" state of affairs, as the reading teacher conducts his/her craft? How do these teachers maintain parity, equiponderance, or a counterbalance among the particular practices involved? What are the estimates, ruminations, and counterchecks necessary to keep TRF's "balanced" reading instruction from oscillating, fluctuating, or wandering off course, and thus going out of control?

4. Elsewhere in its publications, TRF suggests that it may have been troubled, at least below the surface, in making its recommendation for "balanced" reading teaching. Here, TRF notes that it has "established criteria for selecting [teacher] training programs, all of which had to have a strong research base." In this respect, TRF goes on, "instructional materials should be proven materials based on quality research in reading instruction." However, TRF appears unaware or forgot that only DISEC reading tutelage is corroborated by "strong," "quality," i.e., experimental research. None of the unique principles nor novel practices of WL teaching is so validated, TRF must be reminded.

5. It is apparent that TRF waffles further on the issue of the kind of reading instruction that should be conducted when it contends that "effective schools dedicate between two and three hours to direct instruction in reading each day." In this regard, it has been proved in the San Diego city schools that if experimentally discredited WL instuction is conducted three hours per day, small advances in students'reading growth indeed can be achieved. The Reading Foundation seems to agree that if enough time is given to conducting inferior reading teaching, some progress in its attainment can be expected.

   Left unattended to here is the reproach to this plan from specialists in subject matter fields such as history, civics, mathematics, science, technology, art, music, physical education, etc. They rightly complain that schools accepting TRF' advice deny their students the benefits of a balanced school curriculum. That certainly has been the case in the San Diego city school district.

   To this criticism TRF lamely replies: "Spending time to teach children to read will, in the long run, teach them more math and science than spending more time on math and science will teach them." This obviously is a true statement only if the kind of reading instruction conducted is that which scientific findings consistently declare is the most fruitful.

   Equally questionable, therefore, is TRF's observation that parents "want their children taught the basics." It is not credible for school districts that adopt the TRF program to tell parents, "We are teaching your children the basics," when in actuality these subject matters are being neglected because of a refusal by TRF to adopt the most time-effective reading tuition that science can derive.

6. Emphasized with pride by TRF is how it "intentionally made the idea of reading to preschool children a moral issue in our community because we want parents to feel guilty if they do not read to their kids." There is empirical truth about this matter. It is that the number of times, and the total amount that parents read aloud to their prekindergarten children, statistically correlate to an insignificant degree, with how quickly these youngsters later learn to read in school.

   The reason for lack of a substantial causal relationship between young children's listening to stories read aloud, and their subsequent ability to recognize written words quickly and accurately (automatically), is that the former is an instinctual skill acquired effortlessly. By contrast, learning to read words automatically develops in the shortest time possible with DISEC tutelage.

   Listening to their parents read aloud does provide children some emotional bonding with their elders. It also helps improve preschool youngsters' vocabulary knowledge. However, this latter factor does not have a significant effect on students' success in reading familiar material within the time frame of grades K-3. In these grades, the urgent goal of reading teaching is to instruct children how to automatically identify commonplace written words found within uncomplicated sentence structures.

   By being able to concentate the bulk of their mental energy in this fashion, beginning readers become acquainted in the briefest time possible with what is required of them in order to comprehend written texts. To this point, TRF must be given credit for conceding that in grades "K-3, children learn to read. From 3-12, they read to learn."

7. The official document of TRF is The 90% Reading Goal (NRG), written in 1998 by Lynn Fielding, Nancy Kerr, and Paul Rosier (Kennewick, WA: The New Foundation Press). It is significant that none of the authors of the NRG is a notable expert in reading instruction in grades K-3. Fielding is an attorney, Kerr is a former high school teacher, and Rosier is superintendent of a school district.

   To be expected in the NRG, therefore, are signs of a lack of extensive experience with the historical scientific literature on reading instruction. In this regard, Rosier exhibits no confidence in the kind of "direct" reading teaching described in his 1977 Ed.D. dissertation, completed at Northern Arizona University. This present reluctance by Rosier contrasts with the strong approval he expressed a generation ago toward "initial reading strategies" that he reports doubled the progress of Native American children's learning to read.

8. Despite its hesitation to endorse experimentally verified reading teaching, the NRG does not hesitate to suggest "what elementary schools need from universities and colleges in preparing prospective teachers" of reading. This request is disappointing, however, since it merely lists nebulous needs of fledgling teachers, such as a "stronger foundation in the teaching of reading," and an unspecified, but supposedly "solid repertoire of methods" for doing so.

   In this regard, reading teacher educators must "know the research," the NRG emphasizes. However, the volume rejects the results of both unscientific qualitative investigations on reading methodology, as well as the findings of the experimental variety. There are "no clear winners" as to which kind of research into reading instruction is the more respectable, the NRG wrongly concludes. Consequently, the book's appeal to teacher educators to develop "strategies" for teachers that "meet their [students'] needs," is voiced in an evasive undertone.

   Professors of reading education are further taken to task by the NRG for not providing tomorrow's teachers enough "formal instruction in reading development," for not demonstrating "instructional reading methods with children," for not linking university course work "to actual teaching practices," for offering supervision of student teaching in reading that "is frequently lacking in consistency and depth," and for presenting "theories, models, and hypotheses about reading instruction."

   This advice to professors clearly is for them to stress the details of how to teach reading in their university classes. The counsel from the NRG therefore contrasts sharply with its (along with Kenneth Goodman's) fear that professors of education, as agents of the state, will "establish a national or state reading methodology." In truth, if the state urged teachers to conduct scientifically determined pedagogy, there would be no more hazard to children from it, than now occurs to them from edicts of the Federal Drug Administration.

9. In conclusion, the NRG calls upon the Snohomish public at large to deal in concert with the "persistent problem" of children who read below their grade-level on standardized reading tests. This letter so far has cautioned against people rushing to agree to raise their taxes, so as to formulate copies of TRF-type instruction in their local schools. Nothing in the final chapter of the NRG changes my negative opinion in that regard.

   As described there, the NRG's exhortation for parents and other tax-payers to "mobilize" in support of TRF's proposal "to quantify current reading levels" of students (decide "what minimum level should third graders read") actually has ominous undertones. For example, it implies that a majority vote among parents and the public on this matter should substitute for the large body of scientific information from investigations of standardized measurements as to what should be the "expectations for reading levels in grades K-3."

   This empirical information suggests that the unintended costs of the extreme manner in which TRF claims it can turn almost all children into well-above average readers, are prohibitive.

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