In his latest contribution to Educational Leadership magazine, McREL CEO Bryan Goodwin calls for an end to the “Reading Wars.” If we’d all just heed the research, he argues, it would become clear that children don’t learn to read by being surrounded by books and encouraged to love them, but by learning to decode symbols and by practicing relentlessly. Crucially, it is time to set aside the notion that decoding and comprehension are somehow in competition, he writes. Rather, they are part and parcel of the same process, one that simply does not come naturally and must be taught by teachers who are, themselves, educated in the science of reading.
There’s reason to be hopeful, Bryan adds: If the teaching profession will allow itself to be guided by research and tweak its practices accordingly, virtually all children can read at grade level.
