Sold a Story: The Aftermath

by Susan Cole Ross

The aftermath of the podcast, Sold a Story has been fascinating, and so has the race to embrace a science of reading at a national level. 

I remember how difficult it was to get trained in decoding during my first master's in special education in the late ‘80s and in the course of my second master’s in secondary school reading and language arts, 20 years ago. On the advice of an advisor, I got the training on my own.  It informed and enhanced my career for 40 years.  In demand now, I have been begged out of retirement to address children’s needs through a pandemic of illiteracy and to support teachers out of fumbling approaches to reading.

Teachers love their foundational training and balanced literacy. I don’t blame them. Indeed reading should be joyful, and I love sharing the concept of the reading zone with reluctant readers. I love creating space for a student to get into a reading and lose track of time and space as if they were watching a movie. But for so many of my students, that does not come naturally. Increasingly, it doesn’t come naturally for up to a third of students in the upper elementary in early middle school grades. 

The answer is not to be found in special education, though many parents have defaulted to that route in a system where students have to be identified to receive individualized decoding instruction and have to fail to be identified. But schools are on the right road.  Dyslexia screening has helped to put more teeth into multitiered systems of support. Direct instruction in all aspects of reading, including but not restricted to phonemic awareness, is increasingly available to all students. Hallelujah.