science of reading research article

The Science of Reading Research

Understanding scientific evidence, what is scientific evidence, qualitative and quantitative research, evaluating research, appropriate methodologies, peer review, converging evidence, practical application, what scientific research says about reading, how does reading develop, how can we prevent reading failure, a systemwide response to reading failure.

Classroom observations under the best of circumstances (systematic and reliable observers) do not even permit generalization to other classrooms. (2004, p. 54)

The front line of defense for teachers against incorrect information in education is the existence of peer- reviewed journals in education, psychology, and other related social sciences. (Stanovich & Stanovich, 2003, p. 7)

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The Science of Reading: The Basics

If you prefer, read the text-version of the infographic.

There are so many pieces to the Science of Reading that it can be difficult to know where to start. Here are a few highlights about what the Science of Reading IS and what it IS NOT. This knowledge will help you on your journey to teaching all children, including those with diverse needs and cultural backgrounds, to read.

A Collection of Research

Research, over time, from multiple fields of study using methods that confirm and disconfirm theories on how children best learn to read.

Teaching Based on the 5 Big Ideas

Phonemic Awareness - The ability to identify and play with individual sounds in spoken words.

Phonics - Reading instruction on understanding how letters and groups of letters link to sounds to form letter- sound relationships and spelling patterns.

Fluency - The ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories correctly, with enough speed, and expression .

Vocabulary - Knowing what words mean and how to say and use them correctly.

Comprehension - The ability to understand what you are reading.

Ever Evolving

There is new research and evidence all the time. As populations, communities, and approaches evolve, so should practice.

What it is NOT

A program, an intervention, or a product that you can buy..

The Science of Reading could be considered an approach to teaching reading that is based on decades of research and evidence. It is NOT a specific program.

Phonics-based programs that drill phonics skills.

Phonics is an integral part of teaching reading based on science, but it is just one of the five big ideas that should be taught so all children can learn to read.

Complete and no more study needs to be done.

As with any science, it is never complete. We can always know more. More study happens all the time and researchers, teachers, and families can work together to bring the best research into classrooms.

Suggested Citation

National Center on Improving Literacy (2022). The Science of Reading: The Basics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy . Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org .

Get started on your Science of Reading journey with these highlights about what it IS and what it IS NOT.

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Science of reading: defining guide.

The "Science of Reading: Defining Guide" provides a firm definition of what the science of reading is, what it is not, and how all stakeholders can understand its potential to transform reading instruction.

Topic:  Evidence-based, General Literacy

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The research reported here is funded by awards to the National Center on Improving Literacy from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, in partnership with the Office of Special Education Programs (Award #: S283D160003). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of OESE, OSEP, or the U.S. Department of Education. Copyright © 2024 National Center on Improving Literacy. https://improvingliteracy.org

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Why more U.S. schools are embracing a new ‘science of reading’

Move over “Dick and Jane.” A different approach to teaching kids how to read is on the rise.

For decades, two schools of thought have clashed on how to best teach children to read, with passionate backers on each side of the so-called reading wars. The battle has reached into homes via commercials for Hooked on Phonics materials and through shoebox dioramas assigned by teachers seeking to instill a love of literature.

But momentum has shifted lately in favor of the “science of reading.” The term refers to decades of research in fields including brain science that point to effective strategies for teaching kids to read.

The science of reading is especially crucial for struggling readers, but school curricula and programs that train teachers have been slow to embrace it. The approach began to catch on before schools went online in spring 2020. But a push to teach all students this way has intensified as schools look for ways to regain ground lost during the pandemic — and as parents of kids who can’t read demand swift change .

First, a history lesson

One historical approach to teaching reading was known as “whole language.” (Close cousins of this approach are “whole word” and “look-say.”) It focused on learning entire words, placing the emphasis on meaning. A famous example is the “Dick and Jane” series, which, like many modern-day books for early readers, repeated words frequently so students could memorize them.

The other approach involved phonics, with supporters arguing students need detailed instruction on the building blocks of reading. That meant lots of time on letter sounds and how to combine them into words.

In 2000, a government-formed National Reading Panel released the findings of its exhaustive examination of the research. It declared phonics instruction was crucial to teaching young readers, along with several related concepts.

Whole language had lost.

READ MORE: How a Jordanian scientist spreads the love of reading around the world

What emerged, though, was an informal truce that came to be known as “balanced literacy” and borrowed from both approaches. The goal: Get kids into books they found enjoyable as quickly as possible.

But in practice, phonics elements often got short shrift, said Michael Kamil, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

“It wasn’t a true compromise,” said Kamil, who had sat on the national reading panel. The approach often led to students learning how to guess words, instead of how to sound them out.

Now, as schools look to address low reading scores, phonics and other elements of the science of reading are getting fresh attention, fueled in part by a series of stories and  podcasts by APM Reports . Textbook makers are adding more phonics, and schools have dumped some popular programs that lacked that approach.

What is the science of reading?

While the phrase doesn’t have a universal definition, it refers broadly to research in a variety of fields that relates to how a child’s brain learns to read. Neuroscientists, for instance, have used MRIs to study the brains of struggling readers.

In practice, this science calls for schools to focus on the building blocks of words. Kindergartners might play rhyming games and clap out the individual syllables in a word to learn to manipulate sounds. Experts call this phonemic awareness.

Students later will learn explicitly how to make letter sounds and blend letters. To make sure students aren’t just guessing at words, teachers might ask them to sound out so-called nonsense words, like “nant” or “zim.”

Gone is rote memorization of word spellings. Instead, students learn the elements that make up a word. In a lesson using the word “unhappy,” students would learn how the prefix “un-” changed the meaning of the base word.

Why does it matter?

For some kids, reading happens almost magically. Bedtime stories and perhaps a little “ Sesame Street ” are enough.

But 30 percent to 40 percent of kids will need the more explicit instruction that is part of the science of reading, said Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Other kids fall somewhere in between. “They’re going to learn to read,” said Shanahan, also one of the members of the 2000 panel and the former director of reading for Chicago Public Schools. “They’re just not going to read as well as they could be or should be.”

Complicating the situation, colleges of education often have stuck with balanced literacy despite concerns about its effectiveness. That means teachers graduate with little background on research-backed instructional methods.

The upshot: Parents often pick up the slack, paying for tutors or workbooks when their children struggle, Shanahan said. Extra help can be costly, contributing to racial and income-based disparities.

As a result, a growing number of NAACP chapters are pushing for wider adoption of the science of reading, describing literacy as a civil rights issue.

What is dyslexia’s role in the reading debate?

Parents of children with dyslexia have led the push to use the science of reading. For them, the issue has special urgency. Kids with dyslexia can learn to read, but they need systematic instruction. When the wrong approach is used, they often flounder.

“I can’t even tell you how many screaming fits we had,” recalled Sheila Salmond, whose youngest child has dyslexia. “My daughter would come home and say, ‘Mom, I’m not learning.’ And then it became, ‘Mom, I’m stupid.’”

Salmond found herself testifying before Missouri lawmakers, taking a graduate class so she could tutor her daughter and eventually moving her from a suburban Kansas City district to a parochial school. She now is making progress.

What is changing?

Just a decade ago, it was rare for a state to have laws that mentioned dyslexia or the science of reading.

Now every state has passed some form of legislation. The laws variously define what dyslexia is, require that students are screened for reading problems and mandate that teachers are trained in the most effective strategies, said Mary Wennersten, of the International Dyslexia Association.

READ MORE: 8 things you didn’t know about Dr. Seuss

States often look to duplicate what has happened in Mississippi, which has credited reading gains to a curriculum revamp that started a decade ago. The multi-million dollar effort includes training teachers on the science of reading.

The changes have put some curriculum programs in the crosshairs.

Some Colorado districts, for instance, have ditched instructional materials that didn’t pass muster under a state law that requires schools to use scientifically based reading programs. New York City, whose mayor often talks about his personal struggle with dyslexia, is making changes in its schools as well.

What does the science of reading mean for parents?

Should they be researching the tenets of the science of reading? Do they need to help their children form letters out of Play-Doh? What about drilling their kids on nonsense words? Flashcards?

Only if they want to, said Amelia Malone, director of research and innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

What parents must do, she said, is read to their kids. Otherwise, she recommends helping teachers when they ask for it and pushing for evidence-based practices in their children’s schools.

“Parents can be part of the solution,” she said, “if we educate them on why this is kind of the movement we need.”

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California's Reading Dilemma

Edsource special report, a movement rises to change the teaching of reading, low test scores fuel demands for change, karen d'souza, august 17, 2022.

When Esti Iturralde’s daughter Winnie was in first grade, the girl struggled with learning to read. Like most parents, Iturralde blamed herself at first.

“I thought there was something wrong with my kid. I thought there was something wrong with us,” said the Bay Area mother of two. “I just couldn’t really understand what was going on.”

The teacher consoled that Winnie just wasn’t ready, but Iturralde, a psychologist, began to suspect the type of reading instruction was holding her child back.

“Her teacher was wonderful,” she said. “She created a really vibrant classroom for literacy with beautiful read-alouds and publishing parties. She involved families in reading to the children. So I thought, what’s missing here?”

Iturralde ended up getting a crash course in the science of reading. Part of what she learned is that the human brain is wired to speak but not to read, because written language remains a relatively new invention in human history.

Many educators, however, believe that reading comes naturally, like talking, if the child is immersed in a language-rich environment. That’s why Winnie didn’t get enough explicit instruction in school about phonics, the link between letters and sounds.

The reading wars

Phonics, a method of correlating sounds with letters, may not seem like a controversial concept, but it’s anathema in some academic circles. Many teachers dismiss the practice of sounding out words as old-fashioned drudgery that prevents children from loving literature.

This view of reading harks back to Horace Mann, the father of American public education, who attacked teaching phonics and the alphabet in the 1800s. He believed children should learn to recognize whole words, one of the keystones of the “whole language” movement, which set the foundation for the “balanced literacy” approach used in many California schools from one end of the state to the other.

For the record, balanced literacy touches on phonics, experts say, but it does not give it the laser focus of a “structured literacy” program, which is rooted in phonics and other fundamentals and steeped in the science of reading.

“There’s a phobia about breaking down words into little parts. If you boil it down to the letters on the page, they fear, certain magic may be lost,” said Iturralde. “There’s also the belief that you have to let children discover things for themselves.”

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

Esti Iturralde with her two daughters, Winnie, left, and Lorea, right.

The philosophical tug-of-war between teaching phonics, how to sound it out, and teaching meaning, how to think it through, persists despite exhaustive research suggesting that most children must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters. To make matters worse, most of this is an insider debate that most parents and caregivers know little about. Even the terminology, from balanced literacy to structured literacy, seems designed to scare off the uninitiated.

How many children have been collateral damage in this war of words? The pendulum has been swinging between these competing approaches for decades, despite a body of research on the subject that was codified as far back as 1999 when Congress convened the National Reading Panel .

Some call this battle over reading strategy, “the reading wars.” It’s a conflict that is resurfacing in California and inciting change across the country.

This ongoing EdSource series will do a deep dive into the scope of the literacy crisis in California, digging into emerging research, state policy, a groundbreaking lawsuit, teacher training and bilingual issues, to assess just how much is at stake in a state that fails to teach more than half of its children how to read.

“A generation of kids got sold down the river,” said Austin Beutner, a former Los Angeles Unified superintendent. “They have no grounding in the fundamentals of phonics and decoding. Less than half the kids can read. That’s staggering to me. How can we find that acceptable?”

With New York City and several states shifting their approach and balanced literacy guru Lucy Calkins admitting to flaws in her influential curriculum, “Units of Study,” this academic debate is coming to a head in California. Educators and policymakers are at odds over myriad thorny issues, from battles over curricula  and the politics of teacher credentialing to a newly-funded program to place reading coaches into high-need schools as the literacy crisis deepens in the wake of the pandemic. The central question emerges: Why do so many children struggle to read, and how can their teachers and caregivers help them?

Credit: "The Right To Read" documentary by Jenny Mackenzie

Jessica Reid Sliwerski, right, founder of reading tutoring and curriculum non-profits, helps teacher Sabrina Causey with her first-grade class at Markham Elementary School in East Oakland.

“The literacy crisis in our country is not because kids can’t learn to read,” said Jessica Reid Sliwerski, a literacy expert and founder of Open Up Resources , a nonprofit that offers accessible curricula. “The problem is that a huge swath of our population of young children never gets access to the type of instruction they need. They never get the opportunity to learn how to crack the code.”

Only a third of American students were found proficient in reading, according to 2019 scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card. And that is before the pandemic disrupted schooling, sending test scores into a tailspin. 

“Our hair should be on fire. And the way in which we douse that fire is by getting really, really clear about how the science of reading can equip us to promote that liberatory outcome that reading can be,” said Zaretta Hammond, author of “ Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain .” “Reading is how the brain levels up.”

In California, 48.5% of the state’s third-graders tested at grade level or above in English language arts in 2019. (Non-English learner students tested 57% at grade level.) Students who aren’t reading at g rade level by the third grade will struggle to catch up throughout their educational career, research suggests , quickly falling behind their classmates and widening the achievement gap.

How does the brain learn to read?

One of the key concepts here is that lessons in phonics and other reading fundamentals help change the circuitry of the brain, experts say, forging pathways between the parts of the brain that interpret the auditory and the visual.  

When a child learns to read, as neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene , author of “Reading in the Brain,” puts it, the brain creates an “interface between your vision system in your brain and your spoken language system.” 

That’s why children must be taught how to link the sounds of the words with the symbols on the page, experts say , how to connect speech to print. These neural pathways are like superhighways that become smoother and wider through use, experts say. Helping children forge these connections efficiently is the core of what experts call “structured literacy,” a phonics-based approach.   

“How kids learn is settled science, but we have this big implementation gap from research to practice, getting the knowledge to the classrooms,” said Becky Sullivan, a literacy expert at the Sacramento County Office of Education. “We basically have 360 days to get it right. You have kindergarten and first grade to get kids reading. … You have got to get it done, or you set your kids up for an intervention situation.”

The pillars of structured literacy instruction are often defined as phonics (connecting letters to sounds,) phonemic awareness (identifying distinct units of sound,) fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Without a firm grounding in these foundational lessons, experts say, many children flounder. 

Iturralde, who has a doctorate in behavioral science, conducted some experiments with her first grader, dubbed the Purple Challenge , to see if Winnie would blossom with more phonics, which she did. But she is quick to point out that she lays no blame at the feet of teachers, who have little control over curriculum and strategy.

Teachers at a loss

In fact, many teachers, unaware of the compelling brain research, do not realize that skimping on phonics and other fundamentals may come at a cost. While some children will thrive anyway, experts say, others will falter unnecessarily. 

It’s only by looking back on their experiences with struggling readers that many teachers have a light bulb moment. Many say they will never forget the children they tried, and failed, to help because they didn’t have the expertise they needed. 

“I taught reading wholeheartedly and with a lot of gusto. I tried my hardest, but it was not systematic, it was not explicit,” said Monica Ng, a former kindergarten teacher turned educational consultant. “It was very sad because there were kids who were really struggling to read, and I remember saying to their families, ‘I don’t know what I can do to help you.'”

“It was very sad because there were kids who were really struggling to read, and I remember saying to their families, ‘I don’t know what I can do to help you.’”

Sabrina Causey, a first grade teacher at Oakland’s Markham Elementary, recalls going home and crying after a long day of trying to teach with a balanced literacy curriculum, which she now believes lacked enough phonics to be effective. 

“I was trying to teach the lessons, but they didn’t make sense,” said Causey. “For instance, I taught lessons in how to ‘scoop up’ words, but the kids in my class didn’t know letters or sounds. These kids had no basic skills. So I had one kid who could read that year.”

One of the most controversial practices in balanced literacy is “ three-cueing,” which teaches children to guess at words. When faced with a hard word, like purple, Winnie had been taught to look for contextual clues , such as illustrations, instead of sounding out the word. Take the pictures away and she stumbled.  That’s why champions of structured literacy put the words first.  

“The biggest problem we have is that teachers haven’t been taught how the brain works,” said Nancy Cushen White,  a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco and a reading specialist. “Fifty years ago, it was understandable, but there’s really no excuse for it now. And the worst part is the teachers are working just as hard. Teachers will say, ‘Why didn’t somebody tell me this 10 years ago?’”

Critics of structured literacy, however, feel the phonics-based philosophy is  too reductive. They worry that it’s a series of endless “drill and kill” exercises that will diminish the joy of reading. 

Champions counter that if a child doesn’t get firmly grounded in the fundamentals right off the bat, they may never get to fluency. Children run the risk of falling so far behind that they never master the deep comprehension that is mandatory in later grades. The sooner children can master the fundamentals, they say, the sooner they can immerse themselves in the splendors of great literature.

The secret is that once you get the basics baked into your brain, experts say, reading feels effortless and automatic. The pleasure of reading is the endgame. Phonics is just the warmup. 

The reading wars assume a dichotomy between foundational skills and rich comprehension that doesn’t exist, some experts say. Instead, they are entwined like the braided strands of a rope, growing stronger with every additional thread, as the metaphor of Scarborough’s Reading Rope illustrates.  Put simply, you have to be able to read skillfully before you can think deeply about what you’ve read.

“It’s just like building a house,” said Carol Tolman, a literacy expert and co-author of Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS , a science-of-reading-based training for teachers. “If you build a foundation with a crack and you leave that cra ck, the first floor is going to be a little shaky.” 

Of course, children have varying needs, but only about 5-10% of children will learn to read without very explicit instruction, some experts say. These effortless readers may have given rise to the notion that learning to read should come naturally, but that is not the case for most.

While about 35% of children will learn to read no matter how they are taught, according to many experts , about 40-45% will struggle without clear and consistent lessons in the fundamentals. The remaining 10-15% qualify as dyslexic, and these children benefit the most from a structured literacy program.

“From an equity standpoint, foundational skills are something that is good for all kids,” says Sliwerski, who also created Ignite Reading, which specializes in Zoom-based tutoring, “but they are absolutely essential for the vast majority of the children.”  

Children who struggle with reading often internalize feelings of failure that may set the tone for their academic career, and time-pressed parents blame themselves, experts say, instead of realizing they are snarled in a systemic failure to teach reading effectively. 

“There’s an assumption on the part of the school that if students are not reading well, that’s the kid’s problem,” said Ng, the teacher turned consultant. “It’s a kid-level problem and not an instructional problem.”

Winnie, for her part, became a huge fan of phonics, zooming from reading level B (a kindergarten level) to level O (a second-grade level) by the end of first grade. She was so excited when her mom ordered a phonics book that she took a selfie with it. Now going into third grade, she’s an avid reader, with a special fondness for the Harry Potter canon. 

“I’m proud of her,” said Iturralde. “She talks about loving to read and it being her favorite part of school.” 

Unfortunately, not everyone has a highly educated parent like Iturr alde around to help them connect the dots. Most families can’t afford a private tutor . That leaves far too many children out in the cold, educators say. 

“If the teachers don’t change the practice in the classroom,” said Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chi­cago, “you can’t possibly expect reading achievement to go up.” 

“If the teachers don’t change the practice in the classroom,” said Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chi­cago, “you can’t possibly expect reading achievement to go up.”

Is the tide turning?

While many California school districts use a balanced literacy approach, a compromise between whole-language, which focuses on whole words, and structured literacy, which focuses on phonics, change is underway in many quarters. 

New York City will require all elementary schools to adopt a phonics-based reading program in the coming school year. Oakland Unified began making that switch last year. 

Many states are also considering legislation that would require teacher preparation to include the science of reading.  A few states, such as Louisiana and Arkansas, have recently banned three-cueing, which encourages students to rely on clues, such as pictures, to guess the word. In California, SB 488 requires newly credentialed teachers to receive training in the science of reading, but implementation remains a sticking point . Changing classroom practice by virtue of legislation is no mean feat.

Credit: Palo Alto Unified

Todd Collins

“Given flexibility, teacher preparation programs will change little,” said Todd Collins, a Palo Alto school board member and an organizer of the California Reading Coalition , a literacy advocacy group. “And then, even if the standards are clear, there is a major gap between the rules and what actually happens.”

Issues of quality control and consistency dog the teacher training sphere as a whole, experts say. 

“There are about 1,500 teacher training organizations in the U.S. and they are poorly monitored and poorly supervised,” said Shanahan , founding di­rector of the UIC Center for Literacy. “We’re putting resources in, but our bucket has a hole in it.”

Meanwhile, in California, the governor and the Legislature are setting aside $250 million for reading specialists in the highest poverty schools in the 2022-23 budget, with $15 million more to train these coaches in evidence-based literacy strategies. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond has launched a literacy initiative to get all third-grade students reading by 2026, but he has also said he does not support a comprehensive statewide strategy , rejecting “ a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Without clear guidance, schools and districts often pivot from one approach to another, experts say, creating confusion for students and teachers alike. Oakland and New York City have both flipped back and forth in recent years.

An issue of equity

Some advocates are calling for more accountability. They believe school districts have made mistakes for which students have paid the price. The ramifications of this failure, they warn, include a generation of young people who can’t compete in a knowledge-based economy. 

“This is a civil rights issue because people are being systematically denied access to their civil liberties and their opportunities because they’re illiterate,” said Kareem Weaver, member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM . “This is a social justice issue.” Weaver is prominently featured in the documentar y “The Right to Read.”

“The Right to Read” documentary is the story of the early reading crisis in America. Watch the trailer here .

The key question now, some experts say, is how to build a consensus for change. Bridging the gap between scientists and educators, each laboring in their own silo, may strike at the core of the problem, as Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, argues in “Language at the Speed of Sight.” 

“The gulf between science and education has been harmful,” according to Seidenberg. “A look at the science reveals that the methods commonly used to teach children are inconsistent with basic facts about human cognition and development and so make reading more difficult than it should be. They inadvertently place many children at risk for reading failure.”

The need to connect high-level research to classroom practice drives Margaret Goldberg, the literacy coach at Nystrom Elementary in West Contra Costa. She also collaborated with Seidenberg on a presentation about guiding principles to help educators design evidence-based curricula for the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading conference.

“I try to talk teacher-to-teacher in a way that makes teachers curious about the research,” said Goldberg, the co-founder of the Right to Read Project, a group of teachers, researchers, and activists. “A lot of us were underserved by our teacher preparation and underserved by our curriculum. There are a lot of conflicting messages out there about what we’re supposed to do and why.”

Reading research was the North Star for Kymyona Burk, a principal architect of Mississippi’s reading program. The poorest state in the nation, Mississippi was the only state to post significant gains on the NAEP in 2019. That turnaround was driven by a statewide literacy push that revolved around teacher training.  

“All children deserve teachers who have been trained in the science of reading,” said Burk, who is now policy director for early literacy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an education think tank. “ We not only said we need children reading by the end of third grade, we also said we’re going to help you get there . We put literacy coaches in our lowest-performing schools, and we provided professional development to our teachers.”

Burk describes illiteracy as one of the most solvable issues of our time, but y ou can’t teach what you don’t know. In Mississippi, every teacher goes through LETRS, a science-of-reading-based training.   Still, even statewide strategies and teacher training are not magic bullets, experts warn. 

“It’s not something that’s easy to learn,” said Dale Webster, vice president of language and literacy at CORE, a nonprofit education consulting organization. “It’s not, you get a little course in teaching reading, and then you get a program, and then you just go to town. It takes a long time to learn the skills, and teachers need ongoing support to be able to do it effectively.” 

There’s also the issue of curriculum whiplash, experts say. Teachers who have been tugged back and forth by the reading wars may be resistant to yet another wave of change.

“You’re asking someone to change their identity,” said Aaron Bouie III,  executive director of PreK-5 curriculum in Ohio’s Youngstown City School District. “It is not easy to change a mindset. There will be tears. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

However, grassroots awareness of the issue is growing, reading advocates say, often fueled by social media conversations between parents, teachers and experts. The Facebook group “Science of Reading: What I Should Have Learned in College ” now has roughly 170,000 members. There’s a Science of Reading corner on TikTok with short how-to videos. On Twitter, the hashtag #ScienceofReading is a hotbed of discourse.

Adding to that awareness was American Public Media education reporter Emily Hanford, who challenged the educational establishment by asking why educators were ignoring scientific research in the teaching of reading in a probing series of stories beginning in 2018.

One major sign of the times is that Calkins, a titan in the world of balanced literacy and a professor of education at Columbia University, has revised some of her philosophy , which largely viewed children as natural-born readers. Amid a rising chorus of criticism , she is revising her materials to acknowledge the science of reading.  

Credit: LinkedIn

Lucy Calkins

While the launch of the revised curriculum has been delayed, and details remain fluid, the reboot appears to downplay three-cueing, a mainstay of balanced literacy, include easy-to-read “decodable” books, and encourage sounding out words.

“When a child is reading a sentence such as, “It was cold, so I put on my jacket,” and the child gets stuck on jacket,” Calkins writes on her publisher’s blog. “We now suggest the teacher nudge by saying, “Look at the letters, have a go with that word,” rather than saying, “Think about what’s happening. What might the boy put on?”

This marks a clear shift in focus from the context to the text, where many argue it should always have been.

“To actually have a leader at an Ivy League institution that’s been held up as a kind of pinnacle of teacher preparation say, ‘I learned a lot of stuff in the past five years,’ that’s a big deal,” said Goldberg, who has penned several open letters to Calkins. “The research has been around for decades, and you recently learned about it as a result of public outcry?”

“To actually have a leader at an Ivy League institution that’s been held up as a kind of pinnacle of teacher preparation say, ‘ I learned a lot of stuff in the past five years,’ that’s a big deal.”

This high-profile pivot in thinking about learning to read, coupled with the disruptions wrought by the pandemic, may be leading the education world to a watershed moment, some say, a way to move beyond the latest skirmish in the reading wars. 

“We can seize this opportunity to get really effective instruction in place,” said Goldberg. “If we can allow teachers to have access to the information they need about how the human brain develops, how learning is best accelerated by explicit teaching, then teachers can be responsive to the tactic that will get the most kids, the furthest, the fastest.”

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Donna L Taylor 7 months ago 7 months ago

Taking phonics out of the curriculum was a disastrous mistake. So let’s fix it.

Sandra Smith 12 months ago 12 months ago

Thank you for the excellent article. I hope, for the sake of our children, that the public education system can see the errors in its ways, and make adjustments based on proven, science-based approaches. I can personally relate to many of the points in the article and comments. Out of my 3 kids, only one had difficulty learning to read. Despite spending hours with him, and trying to have him sound out words, it just … Read More

Thank you for the excellent article. I hope, for the sake of our children, that the public education system can see the errors in its ways, and make adjustments based on proven, science-based approaches.

I can personally relate to many of the points in the article and comments. Out of my 3 kids, only one had difficulty learning to read. Despite spending hours with him, and trying to have him sound out words, it just didn’t connect. After spending countless hours googling and researching, I concluded he had dyslexia, which he inherited from his dad. After meeting with his teachers and pointing out the signs in his reading and writing, they agreed that there was a problem, but had no idea how to identify the problem, nor what to do about it. They just weren’t trained. After trying to get help from his public school, and a disastrous 5th grade year that took a terrible toll mentally on my son (and me), I found a private school (The Prentice School), that uses research-based multi-sensory methods including the Orton-Gillingham Approach. After spending 6-8th grade there, he was a new kid, could read and write well, regained confidence in himself, happy, and went on to public high school and graduate college.

Unfortunately, the price of the private school is out of reach for many families of kids who could really benefit. Teaching our public school teachers is the key! Adding similar special teaching programs at public schools would be well worth the expense!!

Sheila Murphy 1 year ago 1 year ago

So good: “Our hair should be on fire. And the way in which we douse that fire is by getting really, really clear about how the science of reading can equip us to promote that liberatory outcome that reading can be,” said Zaretta Hammond, author of “Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.” “Reading is how the brain levels up.””

Zoe Danielson 1 year ago 1 year ago

I have an early childhood directors credential, a multiple subject teaching credential and a science credential for middle school. I have four children. No, children don't all learn the same way. Two of my sons learned through whole language and two learned through structured phonics. I paid for private school and tutoring for my "phonics kids." For myself, I never learned to read in school. I woke up one day in fourth grade and … Read More

I have an early childhood directors credential, a multiple subject teaching credential and a science credential for middle school. I have four children. No, children don’t all learn the same way. Two of my sons learned through whole language and two learned through structured phonics. I paid for private school and tutoring for my “phonics kids.” For myself, I never learned to read in school. I woke up one day in fourth grade and could suddenly read, retain, and comprehend at the level of a college graduate. Go figure.

Vanessa 1 year ago 1 year ago

Great article. I have no idea why schools thought it was a good idea to take phonics out of the curriculums. My sons always had trouble with writing and I bet had they had phonics from the start, they would have been better readers and writers.

Margaret Sisson 1 year ago 1 year ago

I read this entire article and kept thinking why don’t they mention Montessori education? The reading program is based on phonics. An excellent program that was developed 100 years ago. No reason to reinvent the wheel …

Ruby 1 year ago 1 year ago

Great article. A lot to think about in there. Reading for Pleasure is key but how do children get there if they aren’t taught the basics alongside?

Cindy Mc Cartney 1 year ago 1 year ago

I was trained in Balanced Early Literacy for two years. I went to conferences given by lit leaders from all over at least once a month. I was teaching first grade at the time. All of my students displayed success in their reading skills. Phonics are just part of the balanced lit program, which turned out to be quite successful. Because I was the lit leader at our school site, I received more extensive … Read More

I was trained in Balanced Early Literacy for two years. I went to conferences given by lit leaders from all over at least once a month. I was teaching first grade at the time. All of my students displayed success in their reading skills. Phonics are just part of the balanced lit program, which turned out to be quite successful. Because I was the lit leader at our school site, I received more extensive training. Perhaps that is the key to successful teaching. What if all of the kindergarten and first grade teachers received the training I had the opportunity to receive? Incorporating balance with phonics, and offering explicit training is what gives positive results. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

Erik Kengaard 2 years ago 2 years ago

What happened to parents helping their kids? I don’t recall reading being a problem in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s insane to leave learning such an important skill as reading to K12 teachers. Same for basic math, physics, . . .

Lois Horner 2 years ago 2 years ago

I taught many first graders to read using a program called The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spaulding. Her program was based on the Orten-Gillingham method of teaching reading using structured phonics.

Neiani 2 years ago 2 years ago

Great article! Teaching the science of reading to teachers is a must!!

Tina Costantino-Lane, EdD 2 years ago 2 years ago

Thank you for an informative article; however, one aspect that was not presented was that the kindergarten standards have only recently included extensive phonics. Some kindergarten students are not ready for the abstract nature of phonics, others have underdeveloped language, and still others have no interest in learning how to read. Some students who struggle with reading in kindergarten may not struggle, if extensive phonics was postponed until first grade. Learning to read is not … Read More

Thank you for an informative article; however, one aspect that was not presented was that the kindergarten standards have only recently included extensive phonics. Some kindergarten students are not ready for the abstract nature of phonics, others have underdeveloped language, and still others have no interest in learning how to read.

Some students who struggle with reading in kindergarten may not struggle, if extensive phonics was postponed until first grade. Learning to read is not merely learning letter/sound correspondences as English has 26 letters but 44 sounds, and some words cannot be decoded. When the reading curriculum takes up most of the day, there is little time for other subjects. The content areas develop language that enable decoding.

Sylvie Matte 2 years ago 2 years ago

This article is music to my ears!! I am a parent of a very high IQ kid who could not read, was diagnosed with dyslexia and was going to totally fail and probably drop out of school if I didn’t intervene to get her the instructions she needed. The system put the blame on me, on her but never on themselves. These years were the most stressful and frustrating of my and my daughter’s life. … Read More

This article is music to my ears!! I am a parent of a very high IQ kid who could not read, was diagnosed with dyslexia and was going to totally fail and probably drop out of school if I didn’t intervene to get her the instructions she needed.

The system put the blame on me, on her but never on themselves. These years were the most stressful and frustrating of my and my daughter’s life. I will do anything I can to help other kids not to go through this. It’s a nightmare.

Sharon M Thurmond 2 years ago 2 years ago

Thank you Karen for this informative article. I will share it with my community. And yes, in order to enjoy reading and be proficient in any subject,…”children must be taught how to link the sounds of the words with the symbols on the page”. Our educational system has failed the majority of our students, but those of us who care, like The Natoma Black Parents United group. can and will stimulate change.

Robert Bowman 2 years ago 2 years ago

As a reading instruction specialist, I have taught dozens of students how to read, using a phonics based approach. Every single student learned to read well. Teaching the sounds of letters is the key. Once a student grasps the fact that 16 of the 26 letters make only 1 sound, and 10 letters make more than 1 sound, the student begins to understand how to read.

Sherry Goldojarb 2 years ago 2 years ago

I was a kinder teacher for 23 years with Los Angeles Unified. Most of my students were 2nd language learners. I would tell parents that one of the challenges was making the connection between letter forms and sounds. I provided an eclectic manner of teaching reading in order to meet the varying abilities of each student. I would say that 95 percent of my students were reading and writing by the end of their … Read More

I was a kinder teacher for 23 years with Los Angeles Unified. Most of my students were 2nd language learners. I would tell parents that one of the challenges was making the connection between letter forms and sounds. I provided an eclectic manner of teaching reading in order to meet the varying abilities of each student. I would say that 95 percent of my students were reading and writing by the end of their kinder year. I would evaluate my success if the 1st grade teachers were happy with their incoming students.

One thing I found helpful with just learning the alphabet was to include something physical, so we would learn the alphabet also using American Sign Language. It really helped some of the struggles. Unfortunately, school districts go with a reading program that is one size fits all. It doesn’t. They need to give teachers a little leeway to work in things that work for their own students and style of teaching.

Harvey Daniels 2 years ago 2 years ago

SOR is not settled science. This is all about political control of schools.

Renae Skarin 2 years ago 2 years ago

The author is correct in that the SOR systematic phonics instruction, along with, and not excluding the other strands of Scarborough's reading rope are essential to skilled reading. "The Reading Rope consists of lower and upper strands. The word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words) work together as the reader becomes accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic with repetition and practice. Concurrently, the language-comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal … Read More

The author is correct in that the SOR systematic phonics instruction, along with, and not excluding the other strands of Scarborough’s reading rope are essential to skilled reading. “The Reading Rope consists of lower and upper strands. The word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words) work together as the reader becomes accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic with repetition and practice.

Concurrently, the language-comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge) reinforce one another and then weave together with the word-recognition strands to produce a skilled reader. This does not happen overnight; it requires instruction and practice over time.” (dyslexiada.org)

What needs to be emphasized is that phonics instruction alone is not enough for many kids to learn to read skillfully. The author places great emphasis on the reading wars and the issue of phonics vs. balanced literacy. While I agree that not enough training in phonics has disadvantaged kids, a lack of attention to language comprehension is equally as detrimental to reading development, especially for kids who arrive in classrooms with a different primary language then the one taught in schools.

In addition, English learners may need support in contrasting the sounds of their home language as compared to English, along with a lot of oral language development to familiarize themselves with the sounds of English (which may be different from the home language). “Students may not be able to “hear” or produce a new sound in a second language. Students who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to letters when they see them in written words.” (Colorin Colorado). In addition, some of the topics in texts may not be familiar to students from culturally diverse contexts, and if they are not taught vocabulary and background knowledge, they will be reading without comprehending what they are reading.

We must be careful not to oversimplify the complexity of literacy instruction to “Just give them phonics and it’ll solve everything.” I don’t imagine that was the intention of the author, but the other important aspects of the reading rope were greatly deemphasized.

Cynthia Damico 2 years ago 2 years ago

Great article! Thank you for the in-depth research and clarity of expression. I believe that the “science of reading” must not stop with reading words. Students further benefit when taught how words work within the structure of a sentence and are provided with the metalinguistic tools to discuss syntax and structure when reading and writing.

Beto 2 years ago 2 years ago

Thank god I learned to read and write in another country. Americans’ obsession over this is nuts.

Olive Josuweit 2 years ago 2 years ago

We are at a time of change. Thanks for writing this article. Children deserve the right to be explicitly taught how to read.

Caroline Grannan 2 years ago 2 years ago

The battle between phonics and the various names of the alternate concept has been going on for decades. I'm 68, and my mom taught me to read before I started K with a book called "Why Johnny Can't Read," which demonstrates that the battle was happening in the '50s. (Of course we have no idea if or how well I'd have learned without the phonic focus.) My take as a longtime watcher of education is: … Read More

The battle between phonics and the various names of the alternate concept has been going on for decades. I’m 68, and my mom taught me to read before I started K with a book called “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” which demonstrates that the battle was happening in the ’50s. (Of course we have no idea if or how well I’d have learned without the phonic focus.) My take as a longtime watcher of education is: people learn in different ways; it’s not like it was *better* in some magical past when phonics was the mode of the day; and it’s unrealistic to believe there’s a watershed moment coming. Hope I’m proved wrong (but don’t place any bets you can’t afford).

J J 2 years ago 2 years ago

And. …cursive needs to be taught again. How can a newly employed individual read a handwritten messages from an upper level staff member?

Kathy DAIGLE 2 years ago 2 years ago

Excellent article Karen D’Souza. Thank you for summarizing so many issues on one article.

Tom Adams 2 years ago 2 years ago

Readers of this article should examine California’s English Language Arts/English Language Development Curriculum Framework. It combines the ELA and ELD standards into a coherent curriculum. The framework is available at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/ .

Dr. Bill Conrad 2 years ago 2 years ago

This is a beautifully written article! Thank you! I spent a career as an assessment and accountability director advocating for scientific approaches to the teaching of reading only to be consistently rejected. I had to resign my position for my advocacy of the science of teaching reading. The teachers are not to blame. The state board, administrators and governance are to to blame. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond continues to advocate that it is up … Read More

This is a beautifully written article! Thank you!

I spent a career as an assessment and accountability director advocating for scientific approaches to the teaching of reading only to be consistently rejected. I had to resign my position for my advocacy of the science of teaching reading.

The teachers are not to blame. The state board, administrators and governance are to to blame. State Superintendent Tony Thurmond continues to advocate that it is up to school districts to choose their reading curriculum. This is unacceptable.

Read The Fog of Education!

Thank you again for a fantastic article!

Rivkah Sass 2 years ago 2 years ago

As a former public librarian, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. A wise woman once told me that reading scores had not fundamentally changed in 50 years which might have served as a clue to educators that the approach to teaching reading using whole language and context was part of the problem, not the solution. Instead, as Emily Hanford pointed out in her excellent podcast series on the science of reading (2019), former … Read More

As a former public librarian, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A wise woman once told me that reading scores had not fundamentally changed in 50 years which might have served as a clue to educators that the approach to teaching reading using whole language and context was part of the problem, not the solution.

Instead, as Emily Hanford pointed out in her excellent podcast series on the science of reading (2019), former educators were making lots of money selling their products making it difficult for school districts to make substantive change that would actually benefit children. The result? Frustrated teachers who know better, kids who are behind and parents who blame themselves. What a shame.

ann 2 years ago 2 years ago

Oh, so much to comment on. In 1989 when I was home with my infant child and not yet an educator, I avidly read the once great Los Angeles Times. That year they had a long form article called, no less, "The Reading Wars." So comprehensive was the research stated there I naively believed that our educational institutions must be rapidly adjusting to systematic reading instruction. I believed the "war" had been won. Yet when … Read More

Oh, so much to comment on.

In 1989 when I was home with my infant child and not yet an educator, I avidly read the once great Los Angeles Times. That year they had a long form article called, no less, “The Reading Wars.” So comprehensive was the research stated there I naively believed that our educational institutions must be rapidly adjusting to systematic reading instruction. I believed the “war” had been won.

Yet when I did enter the field a decade later, even with the National Reading Panel out and available across the country, I came across the hard heads and bullies in the California educational system from Sacramento down to the district and school level, who refused to “accept the science” (ironic). Our “teaching institutions” have stubbornly resisted preparing our teaching workforce to teach reading, saddling our schools with teachers who either adopt a resistant stance to teaching reading systematically, grow frustrated and dissatisfied with education and leave the field, or just spend a career thinking some kids just can’t learn.

This also has lead to over referral to Special Education. Hundreds of thousands of students have lost the opportunity to learn to read and we all know the damaging consequences to them personally and to society. This institutional failure of teacher training has also been documented clearly by reports from the National Council on Teacher Quality, first in the early 2000s and continuing today but literally denied by tax payers supported public universities in California! Though I appreciate this reporting today, Ed Source has also been wishy washy on the subject over the past decade since I have been following. The comments by Webster and Boui are nonsense. Reading science is not difficult to learn and doesn’t take years to learn. If Mississippi can do it, why not California? By the way the brave reporter in Mississippi was named Emily Hanford, a true and rare hero journalist and her piece can be listened to here: https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read .

Finally, though I am passionate about this subject and have much more to say, when Tony Thurmond, the State Superintendent, cannot be a firm supporter of the science, he does not deserve (never did in my view) to hold his position!

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Researchers Translating the Science of Reading

Nicole patton terry.

1 Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Yaacov Petscher

Nadine gaab.

2 Harvard University, Boston, USA

Translation of the science of reading into effective classroom practice and improved reading achievement has been difficult. There is evident when we consider that despite decades of scientific research of how reading develops, many children and adolescents across the country read below expected levels.

Some of the proposed reasons for why translating reading research to reading practice is so difficult have centered on professors in colleges and universities. The public has assumed that some professors do not understand the realities of classrooms settings because they are not engaged with teachers and schools, they are not interested in solving this problem because it is not their priority, or worse, they contribute to the translation problem because their ideologies get in the way of preparing teachers to use evidence-based practices in P-12 schools. In truth, university professors contribute to the science of reading in many different ways. For example, some engage in basic science by studying how the brain learns to read or the genetic influence of reading development. Others engage in applied science, working directly with the community and schools to better the implementation of reading instruction in authentic classroom settings. Because of the broad range of work professors engage in, their roles are often misunderstood. Included among the many misunderstandings are beliefs that professors can teach whatever they want, spend the majority of their time teaching undergraduate students, or, our favorite, have summers off. However, the realities of the job are much more complicated, especially when it comes to the translation of scientific evidence to the public. Three misunderstandings related to the roles of university professors are relevant to translating the science of reading in a way that leads to effective practice and improved student achievement in schools.

Misunderstanding 1: A professor’s primary responsibility is teaching.

Reality: most professors balance responsibilities for teaching, research, and service..

For many people, the word professor conjures up images of Robin Williams’ students standing on a desk in Dead Poets Society , Laurence Fishburne demanding complex thought in Higher Learning, Julia Roberts exploring feminism through art in Mona Lisa Smile , or Harrison Ford battling Nazis in the Indiana Jones trilogy. Even films that are based upon true stories portray a certain image of a professor, like Russell Crowe triumphing over schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind or Denzel Washington molding young minds in The Great Debaters . Although the relationships between professors and their students portrayed in these films are endearing, they only speak to one part of the job.

Many professors do not actually spend the majority of their time teaching students. This is because their time is split across three primary areas of responsibility: research, teaching, and service. The value of teaching and service is evident in the courses they teach, the committees they serve on, and the professional development workshops they deliver. However, research often takes up just as much if not more time because many are also scientists. Scientists apply the scientific method in the search for answers to questions about the human condition, to create inventions that are used in everyday life, and to improve the overall quality of life for humankind. At many universities, research is valued and rewarded much more than teaching and service when it comes to earning promotion and tenure. Balancing the demands and expectations of research, teaching, and service responsibilities makes it extremely difficult for professors to engage in translational activities—translating their science into practice.

Misunderstanding 2: Reading researchers lack P-12 classroom teaching experience, and that is a bad thing.

Reality: reading researchers have different background experiences and their multidisciplinary expertise (which sometimes does include p-12 teaching experience) is a good thing..

A common misunderstanding of reading research is that a lot of it has been carried out by professors who have never been teachers in P-12 schools. This concern is about “street credibility”—how can someone who has never taught a student to read fully understand or support classroom practice? Many reading researchers are faculty in schools of education within teacher education programs—positions typically attained by people with previous experience as P-12 teachers—yet others are not. The “science of reading” has emerged from researchers in schools of education as well as from those in cognitive and developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, genetics, speech language pathology, and other disciplines ( Petscher et al., 2020 ). This is a good thing because reading research benefits from collaboration within and across disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, computer science, applied mathematics, educational policy, and business in order to better understand what “reading” is and how to help it develop.

Perhaps some of the difficulty with translation of the science of reading into everyday classroom practice is due to the broad range of fields that engage in reading research. As noted in a recent report on how to communicate science effectively ( National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017 ), it can be difficult for practitioners to wade through what are often competing voices in the search for the answer to one simple question: what am I supposed to do? This can be difficult for teachers, administrators, and policymakers. However, an important truth is that the science on most human behavior is evolving constantly and rarely settled. Researchers are making new discoveries every day at the same time that teachers are trying to apply those discoveries every day. This makes bridging the divide between reading research and reading practice a challenge, but in actuality, researchers’ different background experiences and multidisciplinary expertise provides a necessary collective wisdom and set of experiences that have led to rapid advances in reading research and practice. Each has brought unique strengths to the table, and each has played an important part in addressing reading instruction and achievement in schools.

Misunderstanding 3: Researchers cannot possibly appreciate the everyday challenges of teaching reading in schools.

Reality: many researchers work alongside practitioners to develop solutions that inform practices, programs, and policies in schools, but we can do better..

An expectation placed upon many researchers by their universities is that they will participate in as many activities as possible that lead to publications in peer-reviewed, scientific journals. There are many reasons why scientific research appears mostly in peer-reviewed journals; some are positive—it allows reviewing scientists to comment anonymously on the work and it is a primary way that moves science forward, allowing it to contribute to a broader knowledge base about things like the science of reading. Other aspects of research appearing mostly in peer-reviewed journals are negative—there are paywalls that prevent the public from accessing articles, and it can isolate researchers from practitioners. In addition, professors often find themselves siloed with colleagues in their field, creating an echo chamber in which they communicate their findings that is outside of schools and classrooms. An unintended consequence of the pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals is that it becomes difficult for professors to engage in collaboration, translation, and dissemination alongside practitioners.

However, there are many researchers who intentionally engage with practitioners at every stage of the research process to generate and apply knowledge. They garner feedback from teachers who are implementing new strategies and curricula, present research in practitioner journals and at conferences, serve on boards in community organizations, share findings and resources through social media, establish formal partnerships with school districts to share research agendas, and invite practitioners, parents, and caregivers to work on research teams and advisory councils. These examples of working alongside practitioners illustrate how researchers actively bridge the research-to-practice divide. However, there is still room for researchers to do better. For those who have been P-12 teachers, and for those of us who have not, it is important to recognize the challenges of promoting learning and development under conditions that may make it difficult to do so, and to understand the student populations who encounter barriers disproportionately due to historical, systemic, and structural inequities in education specifically, and in society in general. All researchers must be conscious of how the research process, from funding to design to knowledge generation to dissemination, can lead to disparity ( Chicago Beyond, 2019 ).

As authors of this paper, our research areas are diverse—psychology, neuroscience, education, and social work—but we are all interested in the science of reading. More than that, we all want to help change the nature of scientific collaborations and change the ways we communicate our research about the science of reading. So, we do what we do best as interdisciplinary researchers: we look to other disciplines to learn, to grow, and to advance our own. One approach we think holds promise for us as individual researchers and for the field of reading research is translational science.

What is Translational Science?

Translational science is a relatively new field that emerged from the biomedical and public health disciplines. Often referred to as “bench to bedside,” translational science is the process of translating research findings into research-based and research-informed practices, programs, and policies to improve individual and population health outcomes (National Institutes of Health (NIH, 2009). Translational science is focused on reducing barriers to the widespread use of these practices, programs, and policies. Translational researchers involve people and communities at each stage of the research process, with the goal of producing research, developing and implementing interventions and practices, and changing policies to improve individual and public health.

Because translational science is a new way to translate science into practice, it can be difficult to understand just what it is, why it should matter, and how to go about it. Translational science can be as simple as improving the readability of scientific articles for an unfamiliar audience. For the field of reading research, examples of translational science can also include:

• advancing scientific research from basic research science (e.g., determining what factors predict children’s word reading ability),
• testing evidence-based practices in authentic environments (i.e., working in multiple classrooms with diverse learners to study different types of word reading instruction),
• communicating and disseminating the research and these practices widely to improve reading achievement (e.g., engaging in professional learning opportunities and teacher training to ensure effective word reading instruction in all primary classrooms).

In this paper we ask, “What does it mean for a reading researcher to be engaged in translational science?” Gilliland and colleagues (2019) are part of a group called Translation Together, and they developed a model of what it means to be a translational scientist ( Figure 1 ). The model provides descriptions of seven character traits of a translational scientist: Systems Thinker, Skilled Communicator, Rigorous Researcher, Domain Expert, Process Innovator, Team Player and Boundary Crosser. In their model, a translational scientist is someone who should possess all of these characteristics. We think there are two reasons why this model does not work for the field of reading research at this time.

• The multiple disciplines that make up reading research differ in how and to whom they translate and communicate research findings. For example, the primary audience for researchers in reading education may be teachers, principals, and superintendents, whereas the primary audience for researchers in cognitive neuroscience may be clinicians, diagnosticians, and pediatricians. Translating research findings from the science of reading to different audiences is important because each has an important role to play in improving reading outcomes. However, translating the research findings effectively would require researchers in each of these fields to develop knowledge and skills from other fields, which would take a tremendous amount of effort and time. This is a challenge because the field of reading research needs effective translation today . The model, as presented, does not take this into consideration.
• The field of education is relatively young in its journey toward effectively translating scientific evidence to the public. This is a challenge shared with many other fields, especially where the findings are controversial (e.g., climate change). Reading researchers are becoming creative in translating research for practitioners and the public. For example, they are writing comic books for young readers with dyslexia (like the second author of this paper, see: https://improvingliteracy.org/kid-zone/ar ), gathering resources for parents and practitioners (like the third author of this paper, see: https://www.gaablab.com/screening-for-reading-impairments ), and participating in podcasts for researchers and practitioners (like the fourth author on this paper, see: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/within-between/id1517310439 ). Despite these efforts, there is still a need to improve the translation of reading research to various stakeholder groups so that reading achievement outcomes improve in schools. Doing so requires empirical study, concerted effort, increased funding, and strategic incentives at a level that does not currently exist within the field of reading research ( Solari et al., 2020 ). Again, this will take time and the field needs effective translation today .

Seven Characteristics of a Translational Scientist

Reprinted with permission from Gilliland, C. T., White, J., Gee, B., Kreeftmeijer-Vegter, R., Bietrix, F., Ussi, A. E., … & Suematsu, M. (2019) . The Fundamental Characteristics of a Translational Scientist, ACS Pharmacol. Transl. Sci, 2, 213–216. Copyright 2019 American Chemical Society.

How can reading researchers provide effective translation today? Rather than developing researchers who possess all of the characteristics suggested by Gilliland et al. (2019) , we believe there is greater value in creating teams. We propose adapting the Gilliland traits to a “Translational Science Team” approach that will more quickly lead to a translation of the science of reading into practice.

Team Translational Scientists

We propose that translational science could happen more effectively and more quickly if scientists who each have expertise in some of these characteristics individually work together to create teams who have all of these characteristics collectively. Strategic collaboration like this could help translational science move forward with more ease and greater impact. With this in mind, we developed an adapted and expanded model of Gilliland et al.’s (2019) traditional model to illustrate the characteristics of scientists within a team approach to translational science (See Figure 2 ). Each of the characteristics in our adapted model is described below.

Characteristics of a Team Approach to Translational Science

Reprinted with permission from Petscher, Y., Terry, N. P., Gaab, N., & Hart, S. A. (2020, April 17) . Widening the Lens of Translational Science through Team Science. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/a8xs6 . Copyright (2020) by Authors.

Big Picture Thinker

A scientist who considers all of the complex interrelations among systems that can impact outcomes. The Big Picture Thinker considers how aspects of individuals (e.g., age, sex, race, poverty, language, culture), microsystems (e.g., family, school, peers), mesosystems (e.g., neighborhood and community), exosystems (e.g., government and political systems), and macrosystems (e.g., widely shared beliefs, customs, and laws) influence the scientific study of educational outcomes.

Skilled Communicator

A scientist who effectively communicates scientific ideas, research, and evidence to various groups. The Skilled Communicator engages with stakeholders like researchers, practitioners, educators, administrators, clinicians, social workers, pediatricians, industry, and policymakers--all of whom are also diverse along many sociocultural dimensions (e.g., race, age, gender, education, language, geography). The Skilled Communicator excels not only at delivering the message in speech and in print, but also at listening and responding to the needs of their stakeholders.

Methods Maven

A scientist who applies the scientific method to develop and/or conduct studies with rigor. Whether using quantitative or qualitative methods, the Methods Maven strives to create the optimal conditions to produce results that are valid and reliable.

Domain Scholar

A scientist with deep disciplinary knowledge across the range of scientific domains within their field.

BAE Innovator

Focused on systems, a BAE innovator is a scientist who identifies b arriers that prevent individuals and groups from a ccessing materials or services as intended and creates new tools, services, and processes that facilitate e quitable access and opportunity. A BAE Innovator is solutions-oriented, acknowledges how problems emerge, and strategically addresses them.

Expert Implementer

A scientist who applies scientific findings to improve outcomes. Whether developing, designing, implementing, testing, or observing practices, programs, or interventions, the Expert Implementer is focused on moving scientific discoveries from the lab to the field. Recognizing the importance of the product and the process, Expert Implementers build partnerships with stakeholders to bridge the divide between research and practice.

Silo Bridger

A scientist who enhances interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration for research, practice, and stakeholder engagement. Recognizing that complex problems often require comprehensive solutions, the Silo Bridger creates or participates in opportunities across disciplines.

Multimodal Disseminator

A scientist who uses multiple and varied creative media to communicate evidence-informed and evidence-based scientific ideas. Stretching beyond traditional outlets like peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, advances in new audio, visual, and social media are used to translate and disseminate findings to a broad and diverse audience.

Team Translational Science in Action

Applying a team approach to translating science into practice relies on researchers and practitioners being willing to do research differently. It also relies on building supports that are not always in place (e.g., sufficient funding). Fortunately, as noted previously, individual reading researchers are already making beginning strides toward translation, so a team approach could provide some of the support needed for a collective effort towards translating reading research.

The potential of this approach has recently taken place as the field has worked to address learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, using an existing research-practice partnership between the Florida Center for Reading Research and a local public school district, a team of researchers, principals, and school district personnel worked to implement an at-home summer reading program and to study outcomes for participating students and their families. The project required:

• Big Picture Thinkers who envisioned evidence-informed solutions to learning loss with school partners who were appropriately focused on the health and safety of their students and staff and funders who were interested in addressing challenges associated with COVID-19;
• Silo Bridgers who brought together school district personnel and principals with university researchers, staff, and graduate students to support the project;
• BAE Innovators who designed programming that was sensitive to the needs of vulnerable learners who attend Title I schools and attuned to issues related to the digital divide in under-resourced homes and communities;
• Domain Scholars with expertise in early reading and language development and instruction, approaches to integrating culturally responsive children’s literature; and effective family-based interventions;
• Expert Implementers with expertise in implementing interventions for young learners at home with families and caregivers and that use text-messaging platforms;
• Methods Mavens with expertise in designing experiments with limited sample sizes and managing multiple kinds of data from multiple sources;
• Multimodal Disseminators with expertise in developing and delivering content through infographics, YouTube videos, and social media platforms; and
• Skilled Communicators to communicate with principals, school district personnel, school board members, parents, and caregivers before, during, and after the program.

By taking a team approach from the very beginning, a diverse group of researchers and practitioners were able to use research evidence to develop, implement, and study a program to address the immediate needs of students and families. There is certainly room to grow and learn in the refinement of our approach to translational science. Nevertheless, this project provides a glimpse of what is possible and how researchers and practitioners can begin.

Moving Forward

One of the ultimate goals of scientific research is translating basic research findings into products, processes, and policies that inform and improve life for the broader community. Many reading researchers may be interested in a translational science approach to achieve this goal. Rather than taking on what may feel like an insurmountable challenge alone, translational team science offers a different way to view that work—one that allows for individual scientists to come together, contributing their narrower set of expertise and skills towards a bigger whole. Teachers, clinicians, and other education practitioners are key members of the team. Both researchers and practitioners have work to do to support the translation of the science of reading.

For practitioners, it may mean joining research teams focused on using evidence-based practices in school settings; using multimedia tools to disseminate research findings to colleagues, parents, and caregivers; supporting formal partnerships between districts and schools and local colleges and universities to address student achievement goals; and advocating for equitable roles for practitioners, parents, and caregivers on translational teams.

For researchers, it may mean creating inter disciplinary research-practice teams that include practitioners as investigators, implementers, and disseminators; conducting replication studies to examine the effectiveness of evidence-based practices for specific student groups or in specific educational contexts; or advocating for translational activities to “count” during promotion and tenure processes. Reading researchers and practitioners have much to learn about applying a translational science framework to the field. It is apparent that the strengths of both researchers and practitioners are needed to translate the science into practice. The team science framework provides reading researchers and practitioners with a realistic guide to achieving the goals of translational science. This team approach is a critical driver for the translation of the science of reading ( Solari et al., 2020 ). Fully embracing a team science approach will move research and its translation forward; and, by doing so, science will remain a public good.

• Chicago Beyond (2019). Why am I always being researched? : A guidebook for community organizations, researchers, and funders to help us get from insufficient understanding to more authentic truth . Available at: https://chicagobeyond.org/researchequity/ . [ Google Scholar ]
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• Solari E, Terry NP, Gaab N, Hogan TP, Nelson N, Pentimonti J, Petscher Y, & Sayko S (2020). Translational science: A roadmap for the science of reading . Reading Research Quarterly , 55 ( 1 ), 347–360. 10.1002/rrq.357 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
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What People Are Getting Wrong About the Science of Reading

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The reading wars have become a tool used to further polarize and divide an already fraught educational climate, and the victims of this war are our nation’s students.

At the forefront of conversations about literacy instruction is the science of reading, a multidisciplinary body of research. Perspectives on the framework lean toward oversimplifying it as a way to champion the teaching of phonics alone. In a recent New York Times article , Susan Neuman, a professor at New York University, speaks of the most recent shift toward incorporating phonics instruction into classrooms: “‘I worry,’ she said, ‘that it’s déjà vu all over again.’” It does feel as if we have had this debate before: teach phonics or not? Teaching phonics is crucial, but it is not the only facet of reading development, despite frequently being portrayed as such. The reading wars have intensified as an unnecessary battle of semantics, a losing battle at that.

Natalie Wexler , an education journalist and author of The Knowledge Gap , recently suggested that science of reading advocates receive pushback because of messaging that promotes phonics as the most important factor in improving reading outcomes. She argues that these advocates need to look at “ all the science, not just the part relating to decoding” in order to support a more comprehensive translation of science into practice for literacy education.

As two veteran educators and science of reading advocates on the front line of addressing the literacy crisis , we provide an answer to Wexler’s call to action to reframe arguments supporting the science of reading. Serving as reading specialists and literacy coordinators, we have developed an integrated model of programs that addresses phonics as well as language comprehension for students at a K-6 Title I school in Pennsylvania. We have observed significant improvement in our students’ early-literacy benchmark scores and, throughout this process, we have developed a perspective on the science of reading that we believe can help others in need of clarification.

We have rooted our work in the knowledge that phonics alone will not solve instructional issues. Students who are learning to crack the code need more intensive instruction in this area, but that instruction should not impede the learning of those who are already decoding. By differentiating phonics instruction through a data-driven model, we provide learning experiences specific to individual student needs. Additionally, cracking the code is not the only element of literacy instruction we provide. Our integrated model includes a comprehensive language arts program that builds students’ knowledge and empowers them to comprehend increasingly complex texts.

The science of reading, while typically villainized for solely advocating phonics, is misrepresented as a phonics program, while really, it is a body of research that informs the most effective way to teach decoding and language comprehension. The definition of the science of reading, provided by The Reading League, is “the vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.” The term “science of reading” does not equate to phonics. That term does not equate to comprehension.

The term also does not equate to a teaching approach. In another recent New York Times article , columnist Nicholas Kristof writes, “Many school systems, most recently New York City’s, are adopting the science of reading, based partly on the success in Mississippi and elsewhere.” The science of reading, however, is not something that can be adopted. It is research that informs the resources and approaches that are adopted so that instruction matches how the brain processes text and creates meaning from language. When the science of reading is branded as something that can be adopted, it is too easy to conflate it with phonics and, thus, problematize it as a single-minded approach toward literacy education. When we conflate the science of reading with phonics, we dismiss a critical aspect of learning how to read that is also informed by the science of reading: development of language comprehension. Hollis Scarborough’s reading rope is a helpful visual metaphor from the science of reading research that depicts the necessity of both aspects of reading development.

Balanced literacy sits on the other side of the reading wars. One definition is “an instructional approach that involves a balance between teacher-led reading and writing instruction and independent learning.” It is difficult to find a consistent definition for balanced literacy because the ambiguity of the term allows for individual interpretation based on teaching preferences. As with the science of reading, balanced literacy is conflated with other terms, including workshop, three-cueing, and whole language. When we conflate balanced literacy with the damaging strategies that have become attached to the label, we contribute to the idea that an intentionally balanced approach to literacy is exclusive to those using erroneous strategies and ineffective instructional practices.

Herein lies why the reading wars will never be won. Both sides have a part of the answer. If we define reading as the action or skill of reading written or printed matter silently or aloud , and if we define the intended outcome of reading to be comprehension, the capability of understanding something, then we need to account for students’ abilities to decode while also building their capabilities to make meaning from what they are reading. The science of reading informs a pedagogical approach toward teaching reading that suggests balancing the literacy block for students so they receive direct, explicit, and systematic instruction in the teaching of phonics (word recognition) and they receive instruction that will build their vocabulary, background knowledge, and understanding of grammatical structures (language comprehension). Instruction aligning with these principles includes a balance of explicit phonics instruction; shared reading experiences; close studies of fiction, nonfiction, and digital media; practice with vocabulary; and application of learning through written and spoken outcomes.

Using information that exists on both sides of the war can empower teachers, administrators, and school leaders to develop a literacy program that is both balanced in its time allocation of the elements of reading instruction and supported by the body of research that is the science of reading. Isn’t it time to call a truce?

How to Submit

A version of this article appeared in the July 12, 2023 edition of Education Week as No One Will Win the Reading Wars

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What is the Science of Reading?

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Our Commitment to Evidence-Based Reading Instruction: Aligning Instruction with the Science of Reading Using Structured Literacy

Being a proficient reader has an impact on a student’s entire education. Teaching students to read is the work of educators. While some educators are well-equipped to take on such a significant task, others wish they were better prepared and supported to make an impact that could change a child’s life. IMSE makes it easy for teachers to access and understand the core principles of Structured Literacy and the Science of Reading (SoR) through their professional development trainings and programs. IMSE programs are delivered by experienced teachers, all with a master’s degree, who know how to ensure that teachers feel knowledgeable and supported in their ability to teach literacy.

Notably, over the past years, the Science of Reading has compiled information that holds important implications for empowering teachers with the knowledge to help students succeed in reading. In addition, intervention research estimates that the use of evidence-based prevention and intervention approaches in literacy, such as what IMSE offers, could decrease the number of below-level readers from 30% to 5%.

The Science of Reading: What it is

The Science of Reading is a comprehensive body of research that encompasses years of scientific knowledge, spans across many languages, and shares the contributions of experts from relevant disciplines such as education, special education, literacy, psychology, neurology, and more. The Science of Reading has evolved from a wide span of research designs, experimental methods, participants, and statistical analyses. This conclusive, empirically supported research provides us with the information we need to gain a deeper understanding of how we learn to read, what skills are involved, how they work together, and which parts of the brain are responsible for reading development. From this research, we can identify an evidence-based best practice approach for teaching foundational literacy skills called Structured Literacy. 

David Kilpatrick stated, “We teach reading in different ways; they [students] learn to read proficiently in only one way.” The Science of Reading (SoR) has demystified any wonder of how we learn to read and offers evidence backed by science to confirm that there is one right way to teach reading. In addition to this, the SoR provides vital information to drive IMSE’s approach to instruction and to reach all learners.

The Science of Reading: What we know

• The SoR helps us to understand the cognitive processes that are essential for reading proficiency. It describes the development of reading skills for both typical and atypical readers.
• The SoR has debunked various methods used over the years to teach reading that were not based on scientific evidence. 
• Most reading difficulties can be prevented in young, at-risk students. In other grades, studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of intensive phonemic awareness training, intensive phonic decoding training, and opportunities for repeated practice with reading controlled text. Intervention in these skills leads to efficient orthographic mapping and the highest degree of success.
• 350 three-sound words
• 4,320 four-sound words
• 21,650 five-sound words
• Letters and sounds: Letter-sound knowledge is essential for both phonic decoding and sight-word learning. 
• Phonic decoding: Early phonological awareness skills enable the development of letter-sound knowledge and should be targeted for direct instruction through first grade. Advanced phonological awareness skills should continue to be assessed and practiced through third grade to ensure that a solid orthographic lexicon is established. 
• Orthographic mapping: Understanding orthographic mapping allows for teachers to support students who struggle to read. Orthographic mapping is the process that occurs when unfamiliar words become automatic sight words. The research on orthographic mapping explains how students develop this vast sight word bank for accurate and automatic word retrieval and also why students with reading problems struggle to develop this skill. 
• Phonics and phonemic manipulation must be proficient to allow for students to build a sight word bank or orthographic lexicon. To support this, students need sufficient practice and review in decoding and encoding, knowledge and application of concept skills, and exposure to decodable text. 
• Comprehension is the ultimate goal for reading. It is driven by two broad skill sets that are identified in the Simple View of Reading (SVoR).

• The Simple View of Reading (SVoR) is further detailed in Scarborough’s Reading Rope, which highlights the essential components of reading.

• Phonics is an important component in early, effective literacy-based instruction.
• Learning to spell is far more complex than just memorizing words. Encoding (spelling) is a developmental process that impacts fluency, writing, pronunciation, and vocabulary. 
• Most teachers have received little knowledge about language structures that are used in reading, speaking, and writing. The SoR has compounded information but has yet to make it into the professional development of all teachers.
• Students with reading difficulties present on a continuum of severity and require highly skilled teachers who have the knowledge and expertise to provide intervention based on the SoR.
• The findings of the SoR translate into practices called Structured Literacy™. Structured Literacy is an approach to teach reading that is based on the Science of Reading.

Structured Literacy:  How we teach

• Through Structured Literacy (SL), teachers implement methods that are appropriate for all students and particularly necessary for students with learning differences.
• Orton-Gillingham is an evidence-based SL approach that uses research from the SoR and incorporates recommended multi-sensory instructional techniques. SL supports instruction that is explicit, sequential, systematic, prescriptive, diagnostic, and cumulative.
• Instruction is assessment-driven. The diagnostic aspect of SL requires continued progress monitoring to measure outcomes and guide differentiation. 
• Students are provided repeated opportunities with decodable text that have ample representations of the phonetic elements for code-emphasis.
• Through regular dictation of words and sentences containing the phonetic concept, students become skilled in spelling words within and outside of the text.

Structured Literacy: What we teach

• Phonemic Awareness
• Comprehension
• Students who have difficulty decoding need a focus on phoneme-grapheme and blending automaticity for both real and nonsense words. Teachers are skilled at differentiating instruction based on assessment results.
• Orthography helps students to understand why words are spelled the way they are spelled. Students learn to identify the overlapping features of words including word origin, phoneme-grapheme correspondence, position constraints, and patterns and conventions. This helps them to acquire the alphabetic principle.
• Phonemic awareness is emphasized as a necessary pre-reading skill and teachers recognize and target the sequence of skills to build phonological awareness from early to advanced skill levels. 
• Regular words are taught according to phonetic patterns and irregular words are analyzed for their irregularities. When proficient readers encounter new words, they phonemically analyze the word for the regular grapheme-phoneme patterns and are able to identify the irregular element(s) with ease. Teaching weak readers to activate this process allows them to align the letters to the phonemes in their memory. 
• Morphology is the study of meaningful units within words. Students are able to expand their vocabulary when they are directly exposed to the study of root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

The Science of Reading has proven that a Structured Literacy approach is a necessary foundation for reading success. As teachers, we make a commitment to continue our education to support the learning of every student. IMSE’s Orton-Gillingham training and programs make it possible for teachers to integrate evidence-based and research-based reading instruction and intervention strategies into Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) to empower all students in every classroom. 

Sign up for our LIVE virtual Orton-Gillingham training! We are now offering half-day, evening, and weekend options to best fit your schedule. 

To learn more about the Science of Reading and Structured Literacy, check out the following great reads:

• Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David Kilpatrick
• Equipped for Reading Success by David Kilpatrick
• Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read by Stanislas Dehaene
• Phonics from A to Z: A Practical Guide by Wiley Blevins
• Unlocking Literacy: Effective Decoding and Spelling Instruction by Marcia Henry
• Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf

IMSE’s approach allows teachers to incorporate the five components essential to an effective reading program into their daily lessons: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. 

The approach is based on the Orton-Gillingham methodology and focuses on explicit, direct instruction that is sequential, structured, and multi-sensory.

It is IMSE’s mission that all children must have the ability to read to fully realize their potential. We are committed to providing teachers with the knowledge and tools to deliver proven literacy education to students of all ages and abilities.

About The Author

Please connect with us on  Facebook ,  Twitter , and  Pinterest  to get tips and tricks from your peers and us. Read the  IMSE Journal  to hear success stories from other schools and districts, and be sure to read the OG Weekly email series for refreshers and tips.

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The order your siblings were born in may play a role in identity and sexuality

Selena Simmons-Duffin

Rachel Carlson

Rebecca Ramirez

It's National Siblings Day ! To mark the occasion, guest host Selena Simmons-Duffin is exploring a detail very personal to her: How the number of older brothers a person has can influence their sexuality.

Scientific research on sexuality has a dark history, with long-lasting harmful effects on queer communities. Much of the early research has also been debunked over time. But not this "fraternal birth order effect." The fact that a person's likelihood of being gay increases with each older brother has been found all over the world – from Turkey to North America, Brazil, the Netherlands and beyond. Today, Selena gets into all the details: What this effect is, how it's been studied and what it can (and can't) explain about sexuality.

Interested in the science of our closest relatives? Check out more stories in NPR's series on the Science of Siblings .

or email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify , Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts .

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave .

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Brit Hanson. Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer.

More from the Science of Siblings series:

• The origin story of National Sibling Day is a celebration of love — and grief
• In the womb, a brother's hormones can shape a sister's future
• These identical twins both grew up with autism, but took very different paths
• birth order

The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’

New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought

P atient One was 24 years old and pregnant with her third child when she was taken off life support. It was 2014. A couple of years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a disorder that caused an irregular heartbeat, and during her two previous pregnancies she had suffered seizures and faintings. Four weeks into her third pregnancy, she collapsed on the floor of her home. Her mother, who was with her, called 911. By the time an ambulance arrived, Patient One had been unconscious for more than 10 minutes. Paramedics found that her heart had stopped.

After being driven to a hospital where she couldn’t be treated, Patient One was taken to the emergency department at the University of Michigan. There, medical staff had to shock her chest three times with a defibrillator before they could restart her heart. She was placed on an external ventilator and pacemaker, and transferred to the neurointensive care unit, where doctors monitored her brain activity. She was unresponsive to external stimuli, and had a massive swelling in her brain. After she lay in a deep coma for three days, her family decided it was best to take her off life support. It was at that point – after her oxygen was turned off and nurses pulled the breathing tube from her throat – that Patient One became one of the most intriguing scientific subjects in recent history.

For several years, Jimo Borjigin, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, had been troubled by the question of what happens to us when we die. She had read about the near-death experiences of certain cardiac-arrest survivors who had undergone extraordinary psychic journeys before being resuscitated. Sometimes, these people reported travelling outside of their bodies towards overwhelming sources of light where they were greeted by dead relatives. Others spoke of coming to a new understanding of their lives, or encountering beings of profound goodness. Borjigin didn’t believe the content of those stories was true – she didn’t think the souls of dying people actually travelled to an afterworld – but she suspected something very real was happening in those patients’ brains. In her own laboratory, she had discovered that rats undergo a dramatic storm of many neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine, after their hearts stop and their brains lose oxygen. She wondered if humans’ near-death experiences might spring from a similar phenomenon, and if it was occurring even in people who couldn’t be revived.

Dying seemed like such an important area of research – we all do it, after all – that Borjigin assumed other scientists had already developed a thorough understanding of what happens to the brain in the process of death. But when she looked at the scientific literature, she found little enlightenment. “To die is such an essential part of life,” she told me recently. “But we knew almost nothing about the dying brain.” So she decided to go back and figure out what had happened inside the brains of people who died at the University of Michigan neurointensive care unit. Among them was Patient One.

At the time Borjigin began her research into Patient One, the scientific understanding of death had reached an impasse. Since the 1960s, advances in resuscitation had helped to revive thousands of people who might otherwise have died. About 10% or 20% of those people brought with them stories of near-death experiences in which they felt their souls or selves departing from their bodies. A handful of those patients even claimed to witness, from above, doctors’ attempts to resuscitate them. According to several international surveys and studies, one in 10 people claims to have had a near-death experience involving cardiac arrest, or a similar experience in circumstances where they may have come close to death. That’s roughly 800 million souls worldwide who may have dipped a toe in the afterlife.

As remarkable as these near-death experiences sounded, they were consistent enough that some scientists began to believe there was truth to them: maybe people really did have minds or souls that existed separately from their living bodies. In the 1970s, a small network of cardiologists, psychiatrists, medical sociologists and social psychologists in North America and Europe began investigating whether near-death experiences proved that dying is not the end of being, and that consciousness can exist independently of the brain. The field of near-death studies was born.

Over the next 30 years, researchers collected thousands of case reports of people who had had near-death experiences. Meanwhile, new technologies and techniques were helping doctors revive more and more people who, in earlier periods of history, would have almost certainly been permanently deceased. “We are now at the point where we have both the tools and the means to scientifically answer the age-old question: What happens when we die?” wrote Sam Parnia, an accomplished resuscitation specialist and one of the world’s leading experts on near-death experiences, in 2006. Parnia himself was devising an international study to test whether patients could have conscious awareness even after they were found clinically dead.

But by 2015, experiments such as Parnia’s had yielded ambiguous results, and the field of near-death studies was not much closer to understanding death than it had been when it was founded four decades earlier. That’s when Borjigin, together with several colleagues, took the first close look at the record of electrical activity in the brain of Patient One after she was taken off life support. What they discovered – in results reported for the first time last year – was almost entirely unexpected, and has the potential to rewrite our understanding of death.

“I believe what we found is only the tip of a vast iceberg,” Borjigin told me. “What’s still beneath the surface is a full account of how dying actually takes place. Because there’s something happening in there, in the brain, that makes no sense.”

F or all that science has learned about the workings of life, death remains among the most intractable of mysteries. “At times I have been tempted to believe that the creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure,” the philosopher William James wrote in 1909.

The first time that the question Borjigin began asking in 2015 was posed – about what happens to the brain during death – was a quarter of a millennium earlier. Around 1740, a French military physician reviewed the case of a famous apothecary who, after a “malign fever” and several blood-lettings, fell unconscious and thought he had travelled to the Kingdom of the Blessed . The physician speculated that the apothecary’s experience had been caused by a surge of blood to the brain. But between that early report and the mid-20th century, scientific interest in near-death experiences remained sporadic.

In 1892, the Swiss climber and geologist Albert Heim collected the first systematic accounts of near-death experiences from 30 fellow climbers who had suffered near-fatal falls. In many cases, the climbers underwent a sudden review of their entire past, heard beautiful music, and “fell in a superbly blue heaven containing roseate cloudlets”, Heim wrote. “Then consciousness was painlessly extinguished, usually at the moment of impact.” There were a few more attempts to do research in the early 20th century, but little progress was made in understanding near-death experiences scientifically. Then, in 1975, an American medical student named Raymond Moody published a book called Life After Life.

In his book, Moody distilled the reports of 150 people who had had intense, life-altering experiences in the moments surrounding a cardiac arrest. Although the reports varied, he found that they often shared one or more common features or themes. The narrative arc of the most detailed of those reports – departing the body and travelling through a long tunnel, having an out-of-body experience, encountering spirits and a being of light, one’s whole life flashing before one’s eyes, and returning to the body from some outer limit – became so canonical that the art critic Robert Hughes could refer to it years later as “the familiar kitsch of near-death experience”. Moody’s book became an international bestseller.

In 1976, the New York Times reported on the burgeoning scientific interest in “life after death” and the “emerging field of thanatology”. The following year, Moody and several fellow thanatologists founded an organisation that became the International Association for Near-Death Studies. In 1981, they printed the inaugural issue of Vital Signs , a magazine for the general reader that was largely devoted to stories of near-death experiences. The following year they began producing the field’s first peer-reviewed journal, which became the Journal of Near-Death Studies . The field was growing, and taking on the trappings of scientific respectability. Reviewing its rise in 1988, the British Journal of Psychiatry captured the field’s animating spirit: “A grand hope has been expressed that, through NDE research, new insights can be gained into the ageless mystery of human mortality and its ultimate significance, and that, for the first time, empirical perspectives on the nature of death may be achieved.”

But near-death studies was already splitting into several schools of belief, whose tensions continue to this day. One influential camp was made up of spiritualists, some of them evangelical Christians, who were convinced that near-death experiences were genuine sojourns in the land of the dead and divine. As researchers, the spiritualists’ aim was to collect as many reports of near-death experience as possible, and to proselytise society about the reality of life after death. Moody was their most important spokesman; he eventually claimed to have had multiple past lives and built a “psychomanteum” in rural Alabama where people could attempt to summon the spirits of the dead by gazing into a dimly lit mirror.

The second, and largest, faction of near-death researchers were the parapsychologists, those interested in phenomena that seemed to undermine the scientific orthodoxy that the mind could not exist independently of the brain. These researchers, who were by and large trained scientists following well established research methods, tended to believe that near-death experiences offered evidence that consciousness could persist after the death of the individual. Many of them were physicians and psychiatrists who had been deeply affected after hearing the near-death stories of patients they had treated in the ICU. Their aim was to find ways to test their theories of consciousness empirically, and to turn near-death studies into a legitimate scientific endeavour.

Finally, there emerged the smallest contingent of near-death researchers, who could be labelled the physicalists. These were scientists, many of whom studied the brain, who were committed to a strictly biological account of near-death experiences. Like dreams, the physicalists argued, near-death experiences might reveal psychological truths, but they did so through hallucinatory fictions that emerged from the workings of the body and the brain. (Indeed, many of the states reported by near-death experiencers can apparently be achieved by taking a hero’s dose of ketamine.) Their basic premise was: no functioning brain means no consciousness, and certainly no life after death. Their task, which Borjigin took up in 2015, was to discover what was happening during near-death experiences on a fundamentally physical level.

Slowly, the spiritualists left the field of research for the loftier domains of Christian talk radio, and the parapsychologists and physicalists started bringing near-death studies closer to the scientific mainstream. Between 1975, when Moody published Life After Life, and 1984, only 17 articles in the PubMed database of scientific publications mentioned near-death experiences. In the following decade, there were 62. In the most recent 10-year span, there were 221. Those articles have appeared everywhere from the Canadian Urological Association Journal to the esteemed pages of The Lancet.

Today, there is a widespread sense throughout the community of near-death researchers that we are on the verge of great discoveries. Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist at the University of Liège in Belgium who has done some of the best physicalist work on near-death experiences, hopes we will soon develop a new understanding of the relationship between the internal experience of consciousness and its outward manifestations, for example in coma patients. “We really are in a crucial moment where we have to disentangle consciousness from responsiveness, and maybe question every state that we consider unconscious,” she told me. Parnia, the resuscitation specialist, who studies the physical processes of dying but is also sympathetic to a parapsychological theory of consciousness, has a radically different take on what we are poised to find out. “I think in 50 or 100 years time we will have discovered the entity that is consciousness,” he told me. “It will be taken for granted that it wasn’t produced by the brain, and it doesn’t die when you die.”

I f the field of near-death studies is at the threshold of new discoveries about consciousness and death, it is in large part because of a revolution in our ability to resuscitate people who have suffered cardiac arrest. Lance Becker has been a leader in resuscitation science for more than 30 years. As a young doctor attempting to revive people through CPR in the mid-1980s, senior physicians would often step in to declare patients dead. “At a certain point, they would just say, ‘OK, that’s enough. Let’s stop. This is unsuccessful. Time of death: 1.37pm,’” he recalled recently. “And that would be the last thing. And one of the things running through my head as a young doctor was, ‘Well, what really happened at 1.37?’”

In a medical setting, “clinical death” is said to occur at the moment the heart stops pumping blood, and the pulse stops. This is widely known as cardiac arrest. (It is different from a heart attack, in which there is a blockage in a heart that’s still pumping.) Loss of oxygen to the brain and other organs generally follows within seconds or minutes, although the complete cessation of activity in the heart and brain – which is often called “flatlining” or, in the case of the latter, “brain death” – may not occur for many minutes or even hours.

For almost all people at all times in history, cardiac arrest was basically the end of the line. That began to change in 1960, when the combination of mouth-to-mouth ventilation, chest compressions and external defibrillation known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, was formalised. Shortly thereafter, a massive campaign was launched to educate clinicians and the public on CPR’s basic techniques , and soon people were being revived in previously unthinkable, if still modest, numbers.

As more and more people were resuscitated, scientists learned that, even in its acute final stages, death is not a point, but a process. After cardiac arrest, blood and oxygen stop circulating through the body, cells begin to break down, and normal electrical activity in the brain gets disrupted. But the organs don’t fail irreversibly right away, and the brain doesn’t necessarily cease functioning altogether. There is often still the possibility of a return to life. In some cases, cell death can be stopped or significantly slowed, the heart can be restarted, and brain function can be restored. In other words, the process of death can be reversed.

It is no longer unheard of for people to be revived even six hours after being declared clinically dead. In 2011, Japanese doctors reported the case of a young woman who was found in a forest one morning after an overdose stopped her heart the previous night; using advanced technology to circulate blood and oxygen through her body, the doctors were able to revive her more than six hours later, and she was able to walk out of the hospital after three weeks of care. In 2019, a British woman named Audrey Schoeman who was caught in a snowstorm spent six hours in cardiac arrest before doctors brought her back to life with no evident brain damage.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time for the field,” Becker told me. “We’re discovering new drugs, we’re discovering new devices, and we’re discovering new things about the brain.”

T he brain – that’s the tricky part. In January 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic was surging toward what would become its deadliest week on record, Netflix released a documentary series called Surviving Death . In the first episode, some of near-death studies’ most prominent parapsychologists presented the core of their arguments for why they believe near-death experiences show that consciousness exists independently of the brain. “When the heart stops, within 20 seconds or so, you get flatlining, which means no brain activity,” Bruce Greyson, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia and one of the founding members of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, says in the documentary. “And yet,” he goes on to claim, “people have near-death experiences when they’ve been (quote) ‘flatlined’ for longer than that.”

That is a key tenet of the parapsychologists’ arguments: if there is consciousness without brain activity, then consciousness must dwell somewhere beyond the brain. Some of the parapsychologists speculate that it is a “non-local” force that pervades the universe, like electromagnetism. This force is received by the brain, but is not generated by it, the way a television receives a broadcast.

In order for this argument to hold, something else has to be true: near-death experiences have to happen during death, after the brain shuts down. To prove this, parapsychologists point to a number of rare but astounding cases known as “veridical” near-death experiences, in which patients seem to report details from the operating room that they might have known only if they had conscious awareness during the time that they were clinically dead. Dozens of such reports exist. One of the most famous is about a woman who apparently travelled so far outside her body that she was able to spot a shoe on a window ledge in another part of the hospital where she went into cardiac arrest; the shoe was later reportedly found by a nurse.

At the very least, Parnia and his colleagues have written, such phenomena are “inexplicable through current neuroscientific models”. Unfortunately for the parapsychologists, however, none of the reports of post-death awareness holds up to strict scientific scrutiny. “There are many claims of this kind, but in my long decades of research into out-of-body and near-death experiences I never met any convincing evidence that this is true,” Sue Blackmore, a well-known researcher into parapsychology who had her own near-death experience as a young woman in 1970, has written .

The case of the shoe, Blackmore pointed out, relied solely on the report of the nurse who claimed to have found it. That’s far from the standard of proof the scientific community would require to accept a result as radical as that consciousness can travel beyond the body and exist after death. In other cases, there’s not enough evidence to prove that the experiences reported by cardiac arrest survivors happened when their brains were shut down, as opposed to in the period before or after they supposedly “flatlined”. “So far, there is no sufficiently rigorous, convincing empirical evidence that people can observe their surroundings during a near-death experience,” Charlotte Martial, the University of Liège neuroscientist, told me.

The parapsychologists tend to push back by arguing that even if each of the cases of veridical near-death experiences leaves room for scientific doubt, surely the accumulation of dozens of these reports must count for something. But that argument can be turned on its head: if there are so many genuine instances of consciousness surviving death, then why should it have so far proven impossible to catch one empirically?

P erhaps the story to be written about near-death experiences is not that they prove consciousness is radically different from what we thought it was. Instead, it is that the process of dying is far stranger than scientists ever suspected. The spiritualists and parapsychologists are right to insist that something deeply weird is happening to people when they die, but they are wrong to assume it is happening in the next life rather than this one. At least, that is the implication of what Jimo Borjigin found when she investigated the case of Patient One.

In the moments after Patient One was taken off oxygen, there was a surge of activity in her dying brain. Areas that had been nearly silent while she was on life support suddenly thrummed with high-frequency electrical signals called gamma waves. In particular, the parts of the brain that scientists consider a “hot zone” for consciousness became dramatically alive. In one section, the signals remained detectable for more than six minutes. In another, they were 11 to 12 times higher than they had been before Patient One’s ventilator was removed.

“As she died, Patient One’s brain was functioning in a kind of hyperdrive,” Borjigin told me. For about two minutes after her oxygen was cut off, there was an intense synchronisation of her brain waves, a state associated with many cognitive functions, including heightened attention and memory. The synchronisation dampened for about 18 seconds, then intensified again for more than four minutes. It faded for a minute, then came back for a third time.

In those same periods of dying, different parts of Patient One’s brain were suddenly in close communication with each other. The most intense connections started immediately after her oxygen stopped, and lasted for nearly four minutes. There was another burst of connectivity more than five minutes and 20 seconds after she was taken off life support. In particular, areas of her brain associated with processing conscious experience – areas that are active when we move through the waking world, and when we have vivid dreams – were communicating with those involved in memory formation. So were parts of the brain associated with empathy. Even as she slipped irrevocably deeper into death, something that looked astonishingly like life was taking place over several minutes in Patient One’s brain.

Those glimmers and flashes of something like life contradict the expectations of almost everyone working in the field of resuscitation science and near-death studies. The predominant belief – expressed by Greyson, the psychiatrist and co-founder of the International Association of Near Death Studies, in the Netflix series Surviving Death – was that as soon as oxygen stops going to the brain, neurological activity falls precipitously. Although a few earlier instances of brain waves had been reported in dying human brains, nothing as detailed and complex as what occurred in Patient One had ever been detected.

Given the levels of activity and connectivity in particular regions of her dying brain, Borjigin believes it’s likely that Patient One had a profound near-death experience with many of its major features: out-of-body sensations, visions of light, feelings of joy or serenity, and moral re-evaluations of one’s life. Of course, Patient One did not recover, so no one can prove that the extraordinary happenings in her dying brain had experiential counterparts. Greyson and one of the other grandees of near-death studies, a Dutch cardiologist named Pim van Lommel, have asserted that Patient One’s brain activity can shed no light on near-death experiences because her heart hadn’t fully flatlined, but that is a self-defeating argument: there is no rigorous empirical evidence that near-death experiences occur in people whose hearts have completely stopped.

At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death. “The brain, contrary to everybody’s belief, is actually super active during cardiac arrest,” Borjigin said. Death may be far more alive than we ever thought possible.

B orjigin believes that understanding the dying brain is one of the “holy grails” of neuroscience. “The brain is so resilient, the heart is so resilient, that it takes years of abuse to kill them,” she pointed out. “Why then, without oxygen, can a perfectly healthy person die within 30 minutes, irreversibly?” Although most people would take that result for granted, Borjigin thinks that, on a physical level, it actually makes little sense.

Borjigin hopes that understanding the neurophysiology of death can help us to reverse it. She already has brain activity data from dozens of deceased patients that she is waiting to analyse. But because of the paranormal stigma associated with near-death studies, she says, few research agencies want to grant her funding. “Consciousness is almost a dirty word amongst funders,” she added. “Hardcore scientists think research into it should belong to maybe theology, philosophy, but not in hardcore science. Other people ask, ‘What’s the use? The patients are gonna die anyway, so why study that process? There’s nothing you can do about it.’”

Evidence is already emerging that even total brain death may someday be reversible. In 2019, scientists at Yale University harvested the brains of pigs that had been decapitated in a commercial slaughterhouse four hours earlier. Then they perfused the brains for six hours with a special cocktail of drugs and synthetic blood. Astoundingly, some of the cells in the brains began to show metabolic activity again, and some of the synapses even began firing. The pigs’ brain scans didn’t show the widespread electrical activity that we typically associate with sentience or consciousness. But the fact that there was any activity at all suggests the frontiers of life may one day extend much, much farther into the realms of death than most scientists currently imagine.

Other serious avenues of research into near-death experience are ongoing. Martial and her colleagues at the University of Liège are working on many issues relating to near-death experiences. One is whether people with a history of trauma, or with more creative minds, tend to have such experiences at higher rates than the general population. Another is on the evolutionary biology of near-death experiences. Why, evolutionarily speaking, should we have such experiences at all? Martial and her colleagues speculate that it may be a form of the phenomenon known as thanatosis, in which creatures throughout the animal kingdom feign death to escape mortal dangers. Other researchers have proposed that the surge of electrical activity in the moments after cardiac arrest is just the final seizure of a dying brain, or have hypothesised that it’s a last-ditch attempt by the brain to restart itself, like jump-starting the engine on a car.

Meanwhile, in parts of the culture where enthusiasm is reserved not for scientific discovery in this world, but for absolution or benediction in the next, the spiritualists, along with sundry other kooks and grifters, are busily peddling their tales of the afterlife. Forget the proverbial tunnel of light: in America in particular, a pipeline of money has been discovered from death’s door, through Christian media, to the New York Times bestseller list and thence to the fawning, gullible armchairs of the nation’s daytime talk shows. First stop, paradise; next stop, Dr Oz.

But there is something that binds many of these people – the physicalists, the parapsychologists, the spiritualists – together. It is the hope that by transcending the current limits of science and of our bodies, we will achieve not a deeper understanding of death, but a longer and more profound experience of life. That, perhaps, is the real attraction of the near-death experience: it shows us what is possible not in the next world, but in this one.

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About half of americans say public k-12 education is going in the wrong direction.

About half of U.S. adults (51%) say the country’s public K-12 education system is generally going in the wrong direction. A far smaller share (16%) say it’s going in the right direction, and about a third (32%) are not sure, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in November 2023.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand how Americans view the K-12 public education system. We surveyed 5,029 U.S. adults from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16, 2023.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos for Pew Research Center on the Ipsos KnowledgePanel Omnibus. The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey is weighted by gender, age, race, ethnicity, education, income and other categories.

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

A majority of those who say it’s headed in the wrong direction say a major reason is that schools are not spending enough time on core academic subjects.

These findings come amid debates about what is taught in schools , as well as concerns about school budget cuts and students falling behind academically.

Related: Race and LGBTQ Issues in K-12 Schools

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say the public K-12 education system is going in the wrong direction. About two-thirds of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65%) say this, compared with 40% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. In turn, 23% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans say it’s headed in the right direction.

Among Republicans, conservatives are the most likely to say public education is headed in the wrong direction: 75% say this, compared with 52% of moderate or liberal Republicans. There are no significant differences among Democrats by ideology.

Similar shares of K-12 parents and adults who don’t have a child in K-12 schools say the system is going in the wrong direction.

A separate Center survey of public K-12 teachers found that 82% think the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the past five years. And many teachers are pessimistic about the future.

Related: What’s It Like To Be A Teacher in America Today?

Why do Americans think public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction?

We asked adults who say the public education system is going in the wrong direction why that might be. About half or more say the following are major reasons:

• Schools not spending enough time on core academic subjects, like reading, math, science and social studies (69%)
• Teachers bringing their personal political and social views into the classroom (54%)
• Schools not having the funding and resources they need (52%)

About a quarter (26%) say a major reason is that parents have too much influence in decisions about what schools are teaching.

How views vary by party

Americans in each party point to different reasons why public education is headed in the wrong direction.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say major reasons are:

• A lack of focus on core academic subjects (79% vs. 55%)
• Teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom (76% vs. 23%)

In turn, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to point to:

• Insufficient school funding and resources (78% vs. 33%)
• Parents having too much say in what schools are teaching (46% vs. 13%)

Views also vary within each party by ideology.

Among Republicans, conservatives are particularly likely to cite a lack of focus on core academic subjects and teachers bringing their personal views into the classroom.

Among Democrats, liberals are especially likely to cite schools lacking resources and parents having too much say in the curriculum.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

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‘Back to school’ means anytime from late July to after Labor Day, depending on where in the U.S. you live

Among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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Editor’s Note: This feature was updated on April 9, 2024, to correct the velocity difference between spacecraft to 11,500 kilometers per hour.

NASA’s LRO ( Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ), which has been circling and studying the Moon for 15 years, captured several images of Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Danuri lunar orbiter last month. The two spacecraft, traveling in nearly parallel orbits, zipped past each other in opposite directions between March 5 and 6, 2024.

LRO’s narrow angle camera (one in a suite of cameras known as “ LROC ”) captured the images featured here during three orbits that happened to be close enough to Danuri’s to grab snapshots.

Due to the fast relative velocities between the two spacecraft (about 7,200 miles, or 11,500 kilometers, per hour), the LRO operations team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, needed exquisite timing in pointing LROC to the right place at the right time to catch a glimpse of Danuri, the Republic of Korea’s first spacecraft at the Moon. Danuri has been in lunar orbit since December 2022. Although LRO’s camera exposure time was very short, only 0.338 milliseconds, Danuri still appears smeared to 10 times its size in the opposite direction of travel because of the relative high travel velocities between the two spacecraft.

LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the Moon. NASA is returning to the Moon with commercial and international partners to expand human presence in space and bring back new knowledge and opportunities.

By Mark Robinson, Arizona State University, Tempe, and Lonnie Shekhtman, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact: Nancy N. Jones NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt, Md.

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Related terms.

• Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
• Earth's Moon
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Planetary Science Division
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There’s an Explosion of Plastic Waste. Big Companies Say ‘We’ve Got This.’

Big brands like Procter & Gamble and Nestlé say a new generation of plants will help them meet environmental goals, but the technology is struggling to deliver.

Recycled polypropylene pellets at a PureCycle Technologies plant in Ironton, Ohio. Credit... Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Supported by

By Hiroko Tabuchi

• Published April 5, 2024 Updated April 8, 2024

By 2025, Nestle promises not to use any plastic in its products that isn’t recyclable. By that same year, L’Oreal says all of its packaging will be “refillable, reusable, recyclable or compostable.”

And by 2030, Procter & Gamble pledges that it will halve its use of virgin plastic resin made from petroleum.

To get there, these companies and others are promoting a new generation of recycling plants, called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, that promise to recycle many more products than can be recycled today.

So far, advanced recycling is struggling to deliver on its promise. Nevertheless, the new technology is being hailed by the plastics industry as a solution to an exploding global waste problem.

The traditional approach to recycling is to simply grind up and melt plastic waste. The new, advanced-recycling operators say they can break down the plastic much further, into more basic molecular building blocks, and transform it into new plastic.

PureCycle Technologies, a company that features prominently in Nestlé, L’Oréal, and Procter & Gamble’s plastics commitments, runs one such facility, a $500 million plant in Ironton, Ohio. The plant was originally to start operating in 2020 , with the capacity to process as much as 182 tons of discarded polypropylene, a hard-to-recycle plastic used widely in single-use cups, yogurt tubs, coffee pods and clothing fibers, every day.

But PureCycle’s recent months have instead been filled with setbacks: technical issues at the plant, shareholder lawsuits, questions over the technology and a startling report from contrarian investors who make money when a stock price falls. They said that they had flown a drone over the facility that showed that the plant was far from being able to make much new plastic.

PureCycle, based in Orlando, Fla., said it remained on track. “We’re ramping up production,” its chief executive, Dustin Olson, said during a recent tour of the plant, a constellation of pipes, storage tanks and cooling towers in Ironton, near the Ohio River. “We believe in this technology. We’ve seen it work,” he said. “We’re making leaps and bounds.”

Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal have also expressed confidence in PureCycle. L’Oréal said PureCycle was one of many partners developing a range of recycling technologies. P.&G. said it hoped to use the recycled plastic for “numerous packaging applications as they scale up production.” Nestlé didn’t respond to requests for comment, but has said it is collaborating with PureCycle on “groundbreaking recycling technologies.”

PureCycle’s woes are emblematic of broad trouble faced by a new generation of recycling plants that have struggled to keep up with the growing tide of global plastic production, which scientists say could almost quadruple by midcentury .

A chemical-recycling facility in Tigard, Ore., a joint venture between Agilyx and Americas Styrenics, is in the process of shutting down after millions of dollars in losses. A plant in Ashley, Ind., that had aimed to recycle 100,000 tons of plastic a year by 2021 had processed only 2,000 tons in total as of late 2023, after fires, oil spills and worker safety complaints.

At the same time, many of the new generation of recycling facilities are turning plastic into fuel, something the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t consider to be recycling, though industry groups say some of that fuel can be turned into new plastic .

Overall, the advanced recycling plants are struggling to make a dent in the roughly 36 million tons of plastic Americans discard each year, which is more than any other country. Even if the 10 remaining chemical-recycling plants in America were to operate at full capacity, they would together process some 456,000 tons of plastic waste, according to a recent tally by Beyond Plastics , a nonprofit group that advocates stricter controls on plastics production. That’s perhaps enough to raise the plastic recycling rate — which has languished below 10 percent for decades — by a single percentage point.

For households, that has meant that much of the plastic they put out for recycling doesn’t get recycled at all, but ends up in landfills. Figuring out which plastics are recyclable and which aren’t has turned into, essentially, a guessing game . That confusion has led to a stream of non-recyclable trash contaminating the recycling process, gumming up the system.

“The industry is trying to say they have a solution,” said Terrence J. Collins, a professor of chemistry and sustainability science at Carnegie Mellon University. “It’s a non-solution.”

‘Molecular washing machine’

It was a long-awaited day last June at PureCycle’s Ironton facility: The company had just produced its first batch of what it describes as “ultra-pure” recycled polypropylene pellets.

That milestone came several years late and with more than $350 million in cost overruns. Still, the company appeared to have finally made it. “Nobody else can do this,” Jeff Kramer, the plant manager, told a local news crew .

PureCycle had done it by licensing a game-changing method — developed by Procter & Gamble researchers in the mid-2010s, but unproven at scale — that uses solvent to dissolve and purify the plastic to make it new again. “It’s like a molecular washing machine,” Mr. Olson said.

There’s a reason Procter & Gamble, Nestlé and L’Oréal, some of the world’s biggest users of plastic, are excited about the technology. Many of their products are made from polypropylene, a plastic that they transform into a plethora of products using dyes and fillers. P.&G. has said it uses more polypropylene than any other plastic, more than a half-million tons a year.

But those additives make recycling polypropylene more difficult.

The E.P.A. estimates that 2.7 percent of polypropylene packaging is reprocessed. But PureCycle was promising to take any polypropylene — disposable beer cups, car bumpers, even campaign signs — and remove the colors, odors, and contaminants to transform it into new plastic.

Soon after the June milestone, trouble hit.

On Sept. 13, PureCycle disclosed that its plant had suffered a power failure the previous month that had halted operations and caused a vital seal to fail. That meant the company would be unable to meet key milestones, it told lenders.

Then in November, Bleecker Street Research — a New York-based short-seller, an investment strategy that involves betting that a company’s stock price will fall — published a report asserting that the white pellets that had rolled off PureCycle’s line in June weren’t recycled from plastic waste. The short-sellers instead claimed that the company had simply run virgin polypropylene through the system as part of a demonstration run.

Mr. Olson said PureCycle hadn’t used consumer waste in the June 2023 run, but it hadn’t used virgin plastic, either. Instead it had used scrap known as “post industrial,” which is what’s left over from the manufacturing process and would otherwise go to a landfill, he said.

Bleecker Street also said it had flown heat-sensing drones over the facility and said it found few signs of commercial-scale activity. The firm also raised questions about the solvent PureCycle was using to break down the plastic, calling it “a nightmare concoction” that was difficult to manage.

PureCycle is now being sued by other investors who accuse the company of making false statements and misleading investors about its setbacks.

Mr. Olson declined to describe the solvent. Regulatory filings reviewed by The New York Times indicate that it is butane, a highly flammable gas, stored under pressure. The company’s filing described the risks of explosion, citing a “worst case scenario” that could cause second-degree burns a half-mile away, and said that to mitigate the risk the plant was equipped with sprinklers, gas detectors and alarms.

Chasing the ‘circular economy’

It isn’t unusual, of course, for any new technology or facility to experience hiccups. The plastics industry says these projects, once they get going, will bring the world closer to a “circular” economy, where things are reused again and again.

Plastics-industry lobbying groups are promoting chemical recycling. At a hearing in New York late last year, industry lobbyists pointed to the promise of advanced recycling in opposing a packaging-reduction bill that would eventually mandate a 50 percent reduction in plastic packaging. And at negotiations for a global plastics treaty , lobby groups are urging nations to consider expanding chemical recycling instead of taking steps like restricting plastic production or banning plastic bags.

A spokeswoman for the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastics makers as well as oil and gas companies that produce the building blocks of plastic, said that chemical recycling potentially “complements mechanical recycling, taking the harder-to-recycle plastics that mechanical often cannot.”

Environmental groups say the companies are using a timeworn strategy of promoting recycling as a way to justify selling more plastic, even though the new recycling technology isn’t ready for prime time. Meanwhile, they say, plastic waste chokes rivers and streams, piles up in landfills or is exported .

“These large consumer brand companies, they’re out over their skis,” said Judith Enck, the president of Beyond Plastics and a former regional E.P.A. administrator. “Look behind the curtain, and these facilities aren’t operating at scale, and they aren’t environmentally sustainable,” she said.

The better solution, she said, would be, “We need to make less plastic.”

Touring the plant

Mr. Olson recently strolled through a cavernous warehouse at PureCycle’s Ironton site, built at a former Dow Chemical plant. Since January, he said, PureCycle has been processing mainly consumer plastic waste and has produced about 1.3 million pounds of recycled polypropylene, or about 1 percent of its annual production target.

“This is a bag that would hold dog food,” he said, pointing to a bale of woven plastic bags. “And these are fruit carts that you’d see in street markets. We can recycle all of that, which is pretty cool.”

The plant was dealing with a faulty valve discovered the day before, so no pellets were rolling off the line. Mr. Olson pulled out a cellphone to show a photo of a valve with a dark line ringing its interior. “It’s not supposed to look like that,” he said.

The company later sent video of Mr. Olson next to white pellets once again streaming out of its production line.

PureCycle says every kilogram of polypropylene it recycles emits about 1.54 kilograms of planet-warming carbon dioxide. That’s on par with a commonly used industry measure of emissions for virgin polypropylene. PureCycle said that it was improving on that measure.

Nestlé, L’Oréal and Procter & Gamble continue to say they’re optimistic about the technology. In November, Nestlé said it had invested in a British company that would more easily separate out polypropylene from other plastic waste.

It was “just one of the many steps we are taking on our journey to ensure our packaging doesn’t end up as waste,” the company said.

Hiroko Tabuchi covers the intersection of business and climate for The Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years in Tokyo and New York. More about Hiroko Tabuchi

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Research team releases new fertilizer prediction tool

by John Lovett, University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

A new fertilizer recommendation tool, developed nationally in collaboration with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, could save farmers millions of dollars annually while reducing excess nutrient losses to the environment.

FRST (Fertilizer Recommendation Support Tool) is a decision aid that provides an unbiased, science-based interpretation of soil test phosphorus and potassium values for crop fertilization, according to Nathan Slaton, a leader on the FRST Project and associate vice president for agriculture and assistant director of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

The tool also augments the interpretation of different fertilizer recommendations across state lines, which was one of the issues that prompted the project. Slaton said phosphorus and potassium are the primary nutrients from routine soil testing that are used to predict the need for crop fertilization.

A team of over 100 soil science and agronomic professionals from nearly 50 universities, four USDA divisions, several nonprofit organizations and one private-sector partner worked for six years to develop the free, web-based tool. Division of Agriculture scientists participating in the project include Slaton, Gerson Drescher, assistant professor of soil fertility, and Bronc Finch, assistant professor and state extension specialist for soil fertility.

"We are extremely excited about the launch of the decision support tool," Drescher said. "FRST was developed in response to the pressing need to harmonize soil testing across state boundaries. It represents an improvement in our ability to evaluate soil test correlation."

Deanna Osmond, soil science researcher at North Carolina State University, is also one of the FRST Project leaders.

"Until now, soil fertility faculty in each state worked independently," Osmond said. "But for farmers who work across state lines, it's difficult to compare or assimilate multi-state guidelines. Our goal is to improve the accuracy of nutrient recommendations through independent, scientifically developed nutrient management best practices that farmers can believe in and adopt."

Slaton explained that the FRST Project has accomplished two important objectives to advance phosphorus and potassium management for crop production . The first was developing a national database to archive soil test correlation and calibration research, ensuring the preservation of research information that supports crop fertilization recommendations as scientists retire. The second objective was to provide a tool that anyone can use to review the research results relevant to their crop, soils and geographic area to check their soil-test-based fertilizer recommendations.

The FRST Project was hosted in a neutral space (USDA) with common access, Drescher noted, "to foster collaboration and innovation in soil fertility research and pave the way for future advancements in nutrient management."

Greg Buol of North Carolina State University provided database and programming support.

"The design of FRST has always been focused on the end user being able to easily use the tool and understand the results," Buol said.

Current capabilities and plans

Currently, the FRST provides critical phosphorus and potassium soil test values, which indicate where there is no expected yield increase from phosphorus or potassium fertilizer application. In the next phase, the FRST will provide research-based phosphorus and potassium rate response information to assist farmers in selecting the minimum fertilizer rate expected to produce maximal crop yield.

The current version (FRST v1.0) includes data from nearly 2,500 phosphorus and potassium trials for 21 major agricultural crops, with the majority being corn and soybean.

The FRST includes a map of the United States that shows the location of phosphorus and potassium trials represented in the database and can be used to identify where the need for additional research data is greatest.

The database was constructed from current and historical research data, including trials from 40 states and Puerto Rico. The team has plans to expand the tool to other crops, cropping systems and nutrients such as sulfur.

Key features of FRST

• Data-driven by utilizing a dynamic database of soil test correlation data constantly updated to improve testing confidence.
• Crop-specific information with a database that currently covers 21 major commodity crops.
• Geographically diverse with published and unpublished trial data from 40 states and Puerto Rico.
• Unbiased information with blended data that removes political and institutional bias in soil test interpretation.
• Scientifically sound data that represents a minimum dataset to provide reliable outcomes.

"We believe that FRST will not only benefit farmers by improving farm economics and conservation practices but also contribute to global sustainability," Finch said.

Provided by University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture

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