Few debates in the field of education are more corrupted by politics than the debate about how America’s schools teach reading — and that’s no small feat given today’s alphabet soup of education-related controversies such as CRT (critical race theory), DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and SEL (social and emotional learning). What we know for certain is that schools have been lousy at teaching kids how to read: National data show that only about a third of fourth-graders, and a significantly smaller portion of poor and minority fourth-graders, can read well. It’s a sad state of affairs — malpractice, really — that so many children are denied the foundation of literacy development required to succeed in school and in life.
