The “Multiverse” of the Science of Reading

In Marvel Comics, superheroes live within the multiverse: a hypothetical collection of universes where everything exists and each operates with unique laws of physics and galaxies. Not one universe is like another. Paul Thomas, professor of education at Furman University in South Carolina, likens the Science of Reading to a multiverse made up of three universes: the science, the movement, and the market.   

The Science of Reading is currently a hot topic on policy agendas nationwide. An Education Week analysis found that, as of September 5, 2024, 40 states and the District of Columbia have laws or policies around evidence-based reading instruction—the foundation of the Science of Reading. Some of these laws and policies require that educators remove balanced literacy approaches from their curriculum and be trained in the Science of Reading.  

Because of these mandates, educators have become limited in how they can teach, and students limited in how they can learn. Ultimately, this approach removes teacher autonomy in the classroom and influences a deprofessionalization of educators.  

Defining the Science   

Most education professionals agree with the 2000 National Reading Panel (NRP) Report that students need explicit instruction in the five pillars of reading: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension.   

What is the potential problem with focusing on the Science of Reading alone? Some educators say it places too much emphasis on a one-size-fits-all model of explicit, systematic, intensive phonics instruction for all students.  

Ground zero for the Science of Reading movement was an article by education reporter Emily Hanford for APM Reports. Published in 2018, Hanford's article said the reason students are struggling with reading is because educators do not know the science of reading or choose to resist it. Students are not “wired to read” but need explicit phonics instruction, she wrote.   

After her article became popular, Hanford created a podcast series, Sold a Story, which went into greater detail about the Science of Reading movement. Hanford’s article and podcast inspired frustration in Thomas and he was moved to speak against her claims. “[The podcast] is very compelling for the public, but it's just not based in real evidence,” Thomas said.   

Yet, because the Science of Reading movement seems to cover multiple universes, it is difficult to assign one absolute meaning. Elena Aydarova, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, points to this ambiguity in a FreshEd podcast.  

“Advocates and activists who are in the trenches both in the state level and national level sometimes actually say, ‘Whatever you want it to be as long as it works for kids, we’ll call that Science of Reading. Did you get results? That’s Science of Reading too,’” Aydarova said. “So, that actually makes it a little bit difficult to discuss, because people assume there’s stability to this definition, when there really isn’t.”  

Julie Hines-Lyman, a Reading Recovery teacher leader at East Main School District 63 in Illinois, said the Science of Reading is “an ideological approach that claims to be scientific or fact-based.”

“It's the idea that you, kind of in a rote way, learn preceding skills before getting into continuous text,” Hines-Lyman said.  

Not all education professionals see the movement as being solely based on phonics. Delilah Davis Gonzales, associate professor of literacy at Texas Southern University and governing board member for the International Literacy Association, said that if instruction “falls under the Science of Reading, it teaches everything.”  

“[Science of Reading] is about the holistic piece of making sure our students are well rounded, have a good understanding of vocabulary, a good understanding of comprehension, and lastly, develop a love for reading so that they like reading, and we give them choices and we connect it to what they actually want to read.”  

Davis Gonzales said it is important that reading instruction is systematic and that teachers are explicit in understanding what their students need. She said that touching on all five of the components of reading, while also knowing the background of students, is essential.   

“Years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a professor who said, ‘Your children come to you as a blank sheet of paper, and it's left up to you to fill that page.’ Well, that's not true,” Davis Gonzales said. “Our children don't come to us as a blank sheet of paper. Our children come to us with a lot of background knowledge, and it's left up to us to add that background knowledge.” 

While there is commonality in how reading professionals think reading should be taught, there are differing definitions of the Science of Reading. The overall movement chooses to focus on a single approach of systematic phonics instruction, claiming it should work for all students.   

The Movement   

Teaching a student how to read is complex. The Science of Reading as a movement has had a great impact on students, teachers, and legislation, according to both Thomas and Hines-Lyman.  

Impact on Teachers. Thomas said that through scripted curriculum, the Science of Reading movement has two major impacts on teachers: deprofessionalization and removal of autonomy.  

“Schools and districts are adopting scripted curriculum, and teachers are being held accountable for fidelity to those programs,” Thomas said. “So, they're being sort of policed, making sure they implement the program.”

“About 80% of reading teachers are women,” Thomas said. “So, a movement that is deprofessionalizing an entire profession who is almost entirely women should raise some concerns. That's something I tried to beat the drum on. I don't think we would do this to a profession that was 80% men. I'm certain of that.”

Hines-Lyman said that she worked in Chicago Public Schools for 33 years but left because she didn’t like how educators were forced to teach from a scripted curriculum.   

“It was not about teaching the students any longer, it was about teaching the curriculum,” Hines-Lyman said. “It took away individualization and asked teachers to kind of teach all students the same thing, regardless of their ability to access what was being taught.”  

Hines-Lyman said scripted curriculum takes away teachers’ knowledge and authority, which is damaging to them and students. She believes there is a correlation between this and why educators have been leaving the profession.  

“I can't say it's a causation, because I don't know that that's been shown, but there's definitely a correlation between this kind of overseer mentality of scripted curriculum and teachers leaving the profession,” Hines-Lyman said.  

In some states, educators are being replaced with new teachers who have not been trained, according to Hines-Lyman. She said those individuals end up leaving the profession as well because there is a lot more to teaching than following a script.  

Impact on Students. Thomas and Hines-Lyman said that the Science of Reading movement has also negatively impacted students. Thomas said that the Science of Reading movement erases context when it focuses only on the pronunciation of words. He said there is evidence the curriculum under the Science of Reading movement is less diverse.

“We're erasing decades of including more women in text, more black and brown people in text. So that diversity is gone, because the Science of Reading is very conservative and traditional in the sense that it's just saying, kids just need to know the relationship between letters and sounds.”  

Having a heavy focus on phonics instruction looks primarily at what a child cannot do when they are learning how to read, according to Hines-Lyman.    

“I think that it can be very damaging to a student's self-esteem to always be working in areas of deficit and not creating success and building on success by individualizing and taking the small steps forward that those kids need,” Hines-Lyman said.  

Hines-Lyman said not all students need the explicit instruction that the Science of Reading movement emphasizes.  

“On the other hand, you have kids who are very advanced, and they're being asked to be in this very rigid skills-based curriculum, and they are already reading chapter books at home, so those students are also getting damaged,” Hines-Lyman said.    

Catherine Campbell, a literacy interventionist in St. Albans, Vermont, said her district switched to a literacy program last year called Amplify because teachers felt other programs weren’t addressing all the needs of their students. She said she jokes with her colleagues that Amplify has become a “one-stop shop” for them. Yet, she said one-stop shopping isn’t feasible because what works for one student may not work for another. 

“I kind of see it as our role as reading teachers, whether I'm a classroom teacher or an interventionist, to figure out what is the system or the program or the approach that's going to work for individual kids and meet them where they're at,” Campbell said. “It's not really, you know, one-size-fits-all.”   

Government Influence   

More and more states are establishing legislation around how educators should teach their students to read, which has been influenced by the Science of Reading. Some educators are apprehensive about having their state governments decide how they do their job. Hines-Lyman said that what is happening in the government right now with literacy legislation began with the Bush administration and the No Child Left Behind Act.  

“This is kind of a building up of that same thing where legislators and I'm going to say journalists like Emily Hanford are in positions where they feel they are the people who know what teaching is because they went to school,” Hines-Lyman said. “I've been to a doctor, but I don't tell my doctor how to doctor me.”  

Campbell agrees that individuals who don’t have an educational background on how to teach should not be creating policies on the matter. In May 2024, Vermont passed Act No. 139 (S.204), which mandated evidence-based literacy instruction. For the last three years, Campbell was part of the advisory council for the act.  

“One of the things that Vermont-NEA pushed back on, which I was appreciative of, was really pushing legislators to recognize that...as far as the Science of Reading, there are other things that really should be taken into account,’” Campbell said.   

Campbell said it was important to her that the act did not prohibit her from using certain instructional materials or methods.  

“It's not appropriate for them to be telling me what I can't use for [classroom] strategies,” Campbell said. “My toolbox should be full, and I should be able to use whatever I see in my professional judgment to be the best approach for individual students.” 

The Market  

With every new instructional technique comes an infinite amount of published textbooks, curricula, and programs. Because of this, economics has inevitably infiltrated the Science of Reading movement.  

According to the 2023 AAP StatShot Annual Report, the publishing industry for K-12 education had a revenue of $5.2 billion, and for higher education, a revenue of $3.9 billion.  

Thomas said that when the Science of Reading stuck as a term, reading programs, materials, and teacher training boosted. He said that advertisements for Science of Reading materials also increased.  

“So, a lot of this is very market, capitalism oriented,” Thomas said. “The education marketplace is thrilled with the Science of Reading.”

Thomas said that the Science of Reading has influenced the market because when people say something does not work, something new is made to replace it.  

“The really frustrating thing is, for 40 years, it's [been] crisis reform, crisis reform, crisis reform,” Thomas said. “And what I really find puzzling is why someone doesn't go, ‘Why do we keep having a crisis again after we reformed?’ It never works. And the reason is we want the crisis because the reform has a market benefit.”  

Thomas said that at the end of the day, there is no reading crisis.  

“But we definitely need to do a better job, mainly for the children who are black, brown, multilingual learners, in poverty, and special needs students, because we've been cheating them,” Thomas said. “What I'm upset about is we've been cheating those students for 100 years.”