A school system-run symposium over how to address a reading crisis began with the superintendent criticizing a nationwide move back toward phonics-centered teaching — then removal of the press before teachers could weigh in.
That happened Wednesday at the the beginning of a system-wide “symposium” on “the science of teaching reading.”
The two-day virtual symposium is being hosted by Lynn Brantley, the district’s literacy supervisor, as well as Assistant Superintendent Ivelise Velazquez. School officials organized the event, they said, to conduct their “own research” and conversation into how best to teach reading at a time when a new state law — and a nationwide academic consensus — has called for schools systems to move from “balanced literacy” approaches to a more phonics-centered “structured literacy” approach.
The symposium, with speeches and breakout sessions and expert testimony, comes at a time when reading scores have plummeted in New Haven: A recent report revealed just 43 percent of New Haven’s kindergarteners, 32 percent of first-graders, 38 percent of second-graders, and 37 percent of third-graders are reading at grade level.
At issue in the symposium is whether the city will shift reading instruction — or seek a waiver from the newly passed state “Right To Read” legislation, which requires all school systems to move to one of five approved “structured literacy” curricula by July 1, 2023 or seek an exception that would need approval from the state’s newly established Center for Literacy Research and Reading Success.
In a speech at the beginning of the symposium, Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey signaled that she has a clear stance on the question, decrying the “bandwagon” to change reading instruction and declaring that “New Haven focuses on balanced literacy.”
Then, as breakout sessions began, officials (who had previously invited press coverage of the event) barred an Independent reporter from covering the rest of the symposium. They argued that they wanted teachers to be able to speak freely.
(Click here to read an account of a May 25 public hearing on the same subject of how to teach reading, held by the Board of Alders Education Committee, at which officials and experts and teachers spoke at length. The press was not barred from that discussion.)
Tracey: NHPS "Won’t Be Distracted"
Yash Roy photos
Opening day of two-day reading symposium.
In her remarks at the symposium, Tracey highlighted her own experience with reading education. She told the roughly 90 teachers, board members, and others present that she had written her dissertation on early literacy and had been involved in teaching reading to students all the way from the kindergarten to college level. She denounced people she characterized as inexperienced in literacy education for speaking on the issue.
“We need to get off this bandwagon and focus on what our students need, focus on what our teachers need to train our teachers in all these different things so that they can best work with the students who are in front of them,” said Tracey.
Tracey said teachers had put decades of work in the school district into designing a balanced-literacy curriculum and regimen that was customized for various forms of learning. Tracey argued that the district’s current regimen is effective at teaching students how to read.
She spelled out that “New Haven focuses on balanced literacy.”
She also pointed towards holes in the phonics education system. Tracey said that auditory discrimination could prevent students who have hearing difficulties from sounding out in the phonic method while other students might be better kinesthetic or visual learners.
The remarks put her on one side of a national debate.
For decades, 67,000 elementary schools including New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) have followed the “Calkins method” of balanced literacy. Pioneered by Lucy Calkins, balanced literacy posits that a focus on stories, themes, and photo association to sound out words is the best way to teach students to read.
In recent years, based on decades of brain research, school systems have moved back to emphasizing phonics more, arguing that balanced literacy ended up exacerbating the achievement gap and racial disparities in education by mistaking how young people’s brains work when they learn to read. Calkins herself has reversed course and is now advocating for returning to more of an emphasis of phonics where students sound out letters and words and then advance to grammar and syntax rather than, say, guess what words are based on how they look or based on pictures.
(Click here to read a story about additional NHPS teachers’ advocacy for a shift to structured literacy; and here to read a New York Times article about the brain research and Calkins’ reversal.)
"Good Discourse" = No Press
Gabriel presents her metaphor on pre-cooked meals and literacy education.
NHPS invited the Independent to attend the event.
In the first 20 minutes of the event, a University of Connecticut expert offered information on the “science of implementation.”
Rachael Gabriel, director of UConn’s reading and language arts center, compared teaching to cooking: She spoke of how a chef adds ingredients and spices to pre-prepared meals to make them better. This, according to her, is analogous to successful literacy curricula. Echoing Tracey, Gabriel told the attendees that legislation like the bill Connecticut recently passed to mandate structured literacy doesn’t necessarily improve reading.
Before she cited the basis for her conclusion, Assistant Superintendent Velazquez informed this reporter that he had to leave the meeting.
“I’m sorry, I was not under the impression that we had the media coming to the sessions,” she stated. “And quite frankly, the breakout sessions are going to be a lot of discussion with teachers. And we really want them to have the opportunity to speak their minds on the topic.”
“We want good discourse,” she stated.
That was the second such move by city officials this spring to bar reporters from an otherwise public government-convened discussion aimed at crafting public policy. Mayor Justin Elicker, through press statements and robocalls and emails, invited all New Haveners to attend a symposium at Hillhouse High School on how to address gun violence, convened by a consultant hired by Elicker’s administration to craft a strategy. When that event, too, got underway, officials booted the Independent from the event with the argument that participants needed to feel comfortable to speak.
Well played Ast. Superintendent Velazquez!
Teachers would most likely have eagerly engaged in “good discourse” with the the reporter present. Teachers in NH make almost zero decisions regarding reading curriculum and instruction. The responsibility is that of central office. Central office has failed. And while I remember Dr. Benitez as a great guidance counselor, I think a better key note speaker would have been someone who has actually taught children how to read! No disrespect to Dr. Benitez or guidance counselors.