Christopher Peek
Appearances
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
Das heißt, du hast die Art von Studien, die Bob Slavin für Erfolg für alle gemacht hat.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
Fast jedes Programm sagt, dass sie Beweise daraus haben. Es ist sehr einfach zu sagen, wir haben dieses weiße Papier, es ist im Hintergrund des Buches oder es ist im Hintergrund der Verkaufsmaterialien. Es ist viel schwieriger, diese Definition wissenschaftlich basierend zu treffen.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
Einer war Success for All, der andere wurde Direktinstruktion genannt. Beide Programme wurden getestet und sie wurden immer wieder verwendet. Andere Programme konnten nicht in der gleichen Lage sein.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
Der föderale Regierung ist nicht erlaubt, zu entlasten, zu empfehlen, zu mandatieren, irgendein Curriculum.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
Und das geht zurück zu der Founding der Departement der Bildung. Es ist literally in der Statut geschrieben.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
So he actually filed a complaint with the Office of the Inspector General.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
So he files a complaint and says, hey, Inspector General, you need to check out this Reading First program. I think they're violating federal law.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
By the very end of it, he was saying, cut funding for this program. He was so upset with it.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
And they said, we want schools to be able to use a much wider variety of programs. And they changed it. They said, let's loosen the requirements. We don't need all that scientifically based reading research anymore.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
As long as you make a good argument that your program derives some of its lessons from research, that counts as evidence-based.
Sold a Story
12: The Evidence
This was, here's a guide and here's some books and fun things you might do to structure your class. So it really was the antithesis of that scripted program like Success for All.
Sold a Story
13: The List
The decisions schools and districts are making now will affect how reading is taught for the next five, ten years, maybe more.
Sold a Story
13: The List
And a lot of money is being spent. Ohio gave out more than $50 million to help districts pay for new reading programs. And most of that money is going to programs that got good ratings from Ed Reports. So, could you just start off by introducing yourself? Sure.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Eric Hirsch started off our interview by talking about the history of the organization.
Sold a Story
13: The List
But he hesitated a bit when I asked him what the influence his organization is having right now. I've seen Ed Reports come up a lot in state regulations or state laws about, you know, you should be looking to Ed Reports to figure out, is this a good program or not? And I was wondering what you make of that. Is that a good thing to have, Ed Reports and state regulations?
Sold a Story
13: The List
He told me Ed Reports shouldn't be the final say on what the best reading programs are.
Sold a Story
13: The List
And Ed Reports has been telling teachers its reviews were based on that science. I found a blog post they published in 2023. It said, Ed Reports has always reviewed instructional materials for the science of reading.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Right. And recently, Ed Reports has made changes. They now include a science of reading summary with the reviews. It highlights how well programs teach foundational skills. And just a few months ago, they changed the review tool. Programs that teach the cuing strategies will now automatically fail.
Sold a Story
13: The List
No, they've already released ratings for 86 reading programs, and they are not going to go back and do those reviews again.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Well, it's clearly a problem when a program that has lots of evidence behind it, a program like Success for All, when a program like that is having such a hard time getting on state lists.
Sold a Story
13: The List
But that could be a problem, too. Rigorous studies are expensive and complex and take a long time. Lots of programs never get studied.
Sold a Story
13: The List
But there is a real risk here, that schools and districts are committing time and money to programs that aren't effective. That's the potential downside when programs that haven't been proven get popular.
Sold a Story
13: The List
What we wanted to do was focus attention on the idea again, to show people that there was an idea about reading that wasn't right, that was still in popular curriculum materials.
Sold a Story
13: The List
But as Steubenville clearly shows, it is more complex than just handing teachers a program. They got all that training. There were resistant teachers there that needed to be convinced.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Right. It's not like the answer here is that every school should be doing success for all.
Sold a Story
13: The List
It's a pretty new organization. It's a nonprofit, and it's only 10 years old, and it's already built up a lot of clout by billing itself as a kind of consumer reports for curriculum.
Sold a Story
13: The List
They review curriculum. Teams of teachers actually do the reviews. They review not just reading curriculum, but math and science curriculum too. And they rate it. It's a red, yellow, and green system. So if you're a publisher, you want an all green rating from Ed Reports. Nearly 2,000 school districts have used its reviews to make their purchasing decisions.
Sold a Story
13: The List
And the organization says 40 publishers have actually adjusted their products in response to an Ed Reports review. This is bigger than just the new state list. EdReports was having a big influence on the publishing industry before SodaStory and the current conversation about the science of reading.
Sold a Story
13: The List
No, it was set up with something else in mind, something called the Common Core State Standards.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Common Core was a thing during the Obama administration. It was an effort to raise education standards across the country. The goal was to make sure students in different states were learning the same core skills. But it ran into the same kind of problem that George W. Bush's big education effort ran into.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Publishers were saying their programs were aligned to the Common Core, just like publishers were saying their programs were scientifically based during reading first.
Sold a Story
13: The List
and that's why EdReports was established. To review curriculum and say, yes, this curriculum really was designed with the Common Core standards in mind, or no, this curriculum wasn't. It's not aligned with the new standards.
Sold a Story
13: The List
I got a call just a couple months after Sold a Story came out from one of the top education officials saying all the executives in the department were listening to Sold a Story and they want to do something about it.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Exactly. And what I found in my reporting is that EdReports has given high marks to some programs that include the cueing strategies, which, as you know, is the opposite of what science has taught us about how kids become good readers.
Sold a Story
13: The List
So I talked to Carrie Curto. She was a literacy specialist at the State Department of Education in Rhode Island, which was one of the first states to really try to push for better reading curriculum. Rhode Island had looked at reports to come up with a list of programs that districts should be using. And Carrie had been in the job for just a couple of weeks when she had a jaw-dropping moment.
Sold a Story
13: The List
She was seeing programs telling teachers to say things like, read the pictures, and to use cues other than the sounds of the letters.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Yep. The Common Core Standards basically lay out what kids should know and be able to do at each grade level. I have a copy of the English Language Arts Standards right here. It's 66 pages long. And here's an example of one of the standards for first grade. It says that a first grader should be able to ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
Sold a Story
13: The List
But the Common Core Standards don't say anything about how to do that. They don't say anything about how to teach. They just say what to teach.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Right. Even some of the people who were once supporters of Ed Reports are recognizing this conflict now between the science of reading and the Common Core standards. I talked to David Lieben. He's an educator with more than 50 years of experience.
Sold a Story
13: The List
As you can tell, he likes to joke around a bit too. David Lieben worked with Ed Reports when it was first set up. He thought the organization was needed because of that problem we mentioned earlier, publishers slapping Common Core stickers on their products and no one checking to see, is this program really living up to that label? But David Lieben now says Ed Reports' methodology is flawed.
Sold a Story
13: The List
I'm calling for a renewed focus on literacy. He's saying a big proposal is coming. We're going to make changes to how reading is taught in Ohio.
Sold a Story
13: The List
He says one of the biggest problems with Ed Reports is that some programs that are backed by rigorous research are not getting those coveted all-green ratings. They've got good studies that show they're effective, but Ed Reports doesn't factor studies into their ratings. That's not part of the review process.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Right. And I should note, too, that both David Lieben and Carrie Curto, the woman from Rhode Island, they're both now associated with organizations that do their own curriculum reviews.
Sold a Story
13: The List
because of what we learned in the previous episode. Success For All is not just a reading curriculum. It's a whole school reform program. So I asked an Ed Reports spokesperson about this, and she told me that reviewing just the reading curriculum wouldn't have provided a complete picture of Success For All. So Ed Reports decided not to review it.
Sold a Story
13: The List
And this bill says the department has to come up with a list of programs that are aligned with the science of reading.
Sold a Story
13: The List
Success for All was actually on one state list, Arizona. But Melissa Weber-Mayer, the education official in Ohio, she told me that her team didn't think Arizona's review process was rigorous enough.
Sold a Story
13: The List
And we know Success for All has that evidence. But most states are not looking at evidence to decide what belongs on their list. Some of them are looking at ed reports instead. And that's why when Ohio's list first came out, Success for All wasn't on it. The program has never been reviewed by Ed Reports.