The Oklahoma State Department of Education announced earlier this month that it would sign on to the controversial organization’s new literacy initiative. Moms for Liberty is a conservative political group whose local chapters have fought to challenge or remove books in neighborhoods across the country.
This new announcement links a national, bipartisan (if sometimes uneasy) movement to improve instruction in basic literacy skills to an overtly political group, adding to the troubling nature of the “Science of Reading” movement. It promises to further complicate the current political situation.
State Public Instruction Superintendent Ryan Walters (R) followed the lead of Moms for Liberty in declaring the first week of October as “Teach Your Kids to Read Week.” The nickname is in response to Banned Book Week, an annual event published by the American Library Association and a coalition of other organizations to draw attention to problematic books.
“Two-thirds of our nation’s fourth graders are not reading at grade level, and instead of focusing on real literacy solutions for students, the American Library Association and its partners are [to] The focus should be on political indoctrination and the issue of so-called ‘banned books’,” Walters said in an Oct. 2 statement.
Moms for Liberty, which some civil rights watchdogs call an extremist group, has called for books and classes that focus on LGBTQ+ rights and the continuing legacy of racism to be removed from schools. I’m looking for it. The group also promotes what co-founder Tiffany Justice calls a “back-to-basics approach.” Reading and writing instruction that focuses on basic reading skills.The group has highlighted the efforts of several state literacy leaders, including during a summit in June.
The complex political history of reading instruction
Many states and school districts have recently revamped their approaches to early reading instruction in an effort to more closely align educational practices with available evidence about how young children learn to read and write.This effort is bipartisan.traditionally conservative states and traditionally progressive states have all passed new laws introduced by legislators across the political spectrum.
Still, some elements of this movement, namely explicit instruction in phonics and the core of knowledge taught in English/language arts classes, have long been conservative because they often involve curricular and instructional mandates. Sarah said that it has been associated with political priorities. Wolfin is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the relationship between educational policy and equitable instruction.
Moms for Liberty claims that the emphasis on diverse books in the classroom makes basic skills a priority.
“We fail our children every day, and Moms for Liberty is speaking out about that,” Justice said in an interview with Education Week. “The idea that diversity is more important in the classroom than teaching children to read is alarming at best. It’s a crime.”
But pitting foundational skills against culturally responsive practices is a false dichotomy, some proponents of evidence-based reading instruction say.
“As a measure of equity, it is incumbent on all of us who have fought for quality literacy instruction to say that we have nothing to do with these people.” said Callie Patton Loewenstein, an educator who previously worked in bilingual elementary schools. Teachers in the District of Columbia School System. “If we’re going to pull books off the shelves that kids should have access to, then why are we doing all this reading?
“Essentially what they’re doing is trying to cleanse their reputation and capitalize on a cause that’s not really their motive,” she says.
Justice said student reading comprehension and how the subject is taught “has always been a priority for Moms for Liberty.”
The Oklahoma State Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Oklahoma’s main English/language arts group.
Politics goes beyond phonics to canon
The science politics of the reading movement has made some strange bedfellows.
Some Republican politicians are aligned with this “back to basics” framework. We advocate stronger foundational skills instruction.
But other groups, such as the NAACP, also support explicit instruction on how to read words as a matter of racial equity. This is a way to ensure that all students receive the type of instruction most likely to help them succeed in school.
However, it is not just basic skills that are politicized. Many reading science proponents also support the idea of a knowledge-building curriculum. It uses a set of materials that work together to systematically introduce students to a particular topic. This focus stems from research that has found that students’ background knowledge is a key component of comprehension.
According to Patton Loewenstein, reading well is a complex process, and teaching it to students requires more than just phonics. Those who frame the movement as a “back-to-basics” approach are misrepresenting that fact, she says.
Yet developing a core set of knowledge that all students should learn is an inherently subjective and often political endeavor. This means prioritizing some knowledge and some authors over others in order to fit into students’ limited class time.
Rachel Gabriel, a professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, said that for some proponents of knowledge-building curricula, this represents a “return to the canon.”
Patton Loewenstein believes some popular knowledge-building programs don’t include enough diverse perspectives–And that this is a legitimate criticism from the left.A discussion of how to analyze whether a reading program is sufficiently diverse.— or even what the ideal thing looks like — continues.
“What is not legitimate is saying that there is something fundamentally conservative about holding reading and writing instruction to higher standards and being careful about how instruction fits into research. I think so,” Patton Loewenstein said.
