Reply to Why do schools in upper middle class areas stick to debunked literacy curricula?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are you talking about in general or just your specific expensive independent school?

Virginia passed a law I think 2 years ago (might have been 3) requiring districts to switch to at least more science-of-reading curricula. It was a broadly popular, cross-political-party bill and basically all northern VA districts have made a switch.

That said, spelling and grammar have not yet been made part of the big "science of reading" push - knowledge for reading comprehension is getting there but even that isn't that great. Broader writing instruction that is direct and explicit hasn't either.

I would love for more generally cognitive science to actually inform how teachers are taught to teach. Based on what I understand, school would probably start looking a lot more like we remember (the "sage on the stage" and lots of practice) and less like it does today.

https://marylandmatters.org/2025/01/02/what-happens-when-a-school-district-commits-to-the-science-of-learning/ [/quote]

I am talking about public school in upper middle to wealthy areas. Why is our school sticking to these methods of teaching reading and writing? I didn’t know enough to actually call different schools to ask about specific curriculum (I did check out school websites and it looked fine. I talked to parents, older people, realtors, neighbors. All raved.). Once we got kindergarten with my oldest, we found out the kids were being taught to memorize a handful of words every week and guess the rest. It doesn’t seem to be teacher specific, either, it is the curriculum![/quote]

Since you're now at independent school, are you sure they're still using that curriculum? MCPS and APS are now using CKLA. FCPS is using Benchmark (not as good but still an upgrade over Calkins). Lots of districts just switched for SY 2024-2025 to a new curriculum.

And yes, before they switched plenty of teachers were doing things like getting Orton-Gillingham certified on their own time. Some admin certainly cared because it was good for the kids and encouraged it. Some I think just saw which way the breeze was blowing and became "science of reading" advocates because it was becoming politically popular and would be beneficial to their careers.

If you want more districts to adopt direct instruction in more areas (spelling, grammar, math), you clearly need Emily Hanaford to do a big expose podcast and your local NAACP to get on board with direct instruction as a way to close the equity gap. Or these were the things that worked in FCPS to get phonics sort of into school.[/quote]

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