It’s Time to Empower Teachers by giving them access to ALL the tools they need to support their students’ literacy development. This can and should be done within each district’s curriculum.
By Dr Sam Bommarito
For those of you who are new to my blog, here is a little background about me and the blog. I have been in education for nearly 5 decades. I have taught every grade from kindergarten through graduate school. I have worn many hats during my career, including high school social studies teacher, Title I reading specialist, Title I staff developer, Keynote Speaker, and national reading consultant. Of all the hats I’ve worn, the one that fits me best is that of a reading teacher. It is in that role that I want to speak to you, teacher to teacher. I want to offer advice on improving literacy instruction nationwide. Here is that advice in a nutshell:
Let’s investigate why I am taking this position. First and foremost, districts know their kids the best. In any given state, the population served by one district differs from that of another, and those differences are often profound. One-size-fits-all plans fail to account for the needs of children in each district. One thing I’ve noticed lately is that many districts are hiring consultants to design and implement programs. I follow several such consultants. One interesting thing is that there was a consultant with a strong background in writing and in writing workshops. You would expect that the consultant would recommend that the district adopt a writing workshop. She did not. As she took the pulse of the district by meeting with teachers and administrators, she felt the learning environment was not ready for using the writing workshop. She takes a nuanced view and firmly believes in guiding clients on a path that starts from where they are and builds on that foundation.
Some districts seek a comprehensive package and adopt it as their curriculum. The better approach is to develop an overall curriculum and then identify materials that support it.
Many districts find out the hard way that there is no magic bullet. Consider this report on that topic LINK.
A simple Google search on the effectiveness of synthetic phonics in England, where such an approach has been mandated for many years, shows that it is not working as the SOR proponents claim on social media.
Here are the links to each of those studies in the order they appear in the screen capture.
In addition, see the extensive work of both Dr. P. L. Thomas and Dr. Andy Johnson. Both have well-researched books on this issue available on their websites. They have both criticized SOR proponents. They both have extensive peer-reviewed research to back up those criticisms. Lest the reader think that I am now going to do some SOR bashing, suggesting that we ignore SOR, that is not where this conversation is going. Before getting into my analysis of the source of the current literacy problems, I want to explore the current state of the field a little further.
Reports about teachers currently in the field are anything but encouraging. Consider this news release from February 2025 from the University of Missouri. It indicates that nearly 78 percent of the 500 teachers surveyed have considered quitting, with more experienced teachers more likely to quit. The release is based on a study published in The School Journal of Mental Health. LINK to press release. LINK to study.
Many of my regular readers are teachers, and they report that they are now being forced to use ineffective programs that do not always meet their students’ needs, rather than the ones they had been using quite successfully. This was done in the name of The Science of Reading. There are currently laws being passed to ban the use of what have been called “ineffective methods, ineffective programs”. What prompted that belief? That belief emerged from a multi-year debate on social media. Here is an open-source article recently published in the Reading Research Quarterly. It analyzes some of what has been happening. The next two screen captures are from that article. To read the full open-source article, which includes a substantial use of peer-reviewed research, please use the LINK provided by the ILA’s Wiley Library. The library allows you to download a PDF of the full RRQ article.
Again, in a nutshell, because the SOR advocates sought to simplify, the result was too often oversimplification that created a binary discussion: good (pro-SOR) vs. bad (non-SOR). I find that Binary discussions often result in the use of straw men (portraying the other side at its worst and ignoring the strengths of the other side’s position). This created what I came to call the “Social Media Version of SOR”. This also created the belief among many that all this was now settled science, and that what remained was to codify into law the practices promoted by the “Social Media Version” of SOR.
I hope that by now the reader has reached a conclusion similar to mine. The Social Media version of SOR is not ready for codification. Add to that the lackluster performance of SOR. It raises scores by retaining students and then teaching decoding using the tests of decoding to prove how great the program is. HOWEVER, when tests that include a substantial upper-comprehension component are used the magical effect of SOR programs often disappear. Again, see the works of P.L. Thomas and Andy Johnson for detailed research-based criticism. One of the things Andy Johnson points out is that the Social Media folks misrepresent the NRP. See his podcast on that point LINK.
* There is one more concern that I have. That is, the current debate on social media has taken a very unscientific turn. When you look at what people call the “hard sciences”, what happens is that when new data comes along casting doubt on the overall theories, those scientists alter their theories to fit the new data. That is not what is happening in the great debate on social media. Because the views are dichotomous, my idea vs your idea, the Social Media folks are systematically discounting and/or discrediting any methods that don’t fit their model. For example, when a local district was able to get the best scores in the state, the state board still denied the use of their program because it used elements of the three-cueing system LINK. The three-cuing system is not meant to be a teaching model; it is an evaluation model, and implementing that evaluation goes beyond just using the three cues, which is a source of great contention within the debate. However, the fact remains that the district was denied access to its program, even though it had the state’s best reading achievement scores. . There are multiple examples of this happening and readers are welcome to add to this list).
*Reading Recovery has a large research base spanning many years that demonstrates its success with many (NOT ALL) students. Despite that, the social media folks discount and discredit the evidence of its success. In my interview with Billy Mollasso Literacy Council of North America (LCNA) LINK, he outlines the evidence for its success and points out that the study claiming to show that success is not maintained over time was found to have a flawed design. In an interesting twist of fate, at the conference where the study was first introduced, when the folks holding the conference were asked what methods they would use, they said they would use Reading Recovery.
*The Social Media folks have not demonstrated the answers to two important questions about the teaching of phonics. How much time is enough time to get the job done for most students? Teachers are reporting that by the time they implement some of the more popular programs, there is literally no time for anything else. Alternate forms of phonics instruction have emerged in the SOR world, most notably EBLI’s approach. By the way, it is one that I often recommend when working with schools. The other question cuts to the heart of my 5-year quest to find common ground using common sense. That is the question of WHAT FORM of phonics best suits the child you are working with. One plausible answer is that the swinging pendulum can be explained by the fact that “all or nothing” solutions are applied. So you MUST use this phonics approach and only this phonics approach. When it becomes apparent that the new method isn’t working for everyone, the result is a total shift to one of the other methods. By the way, it eventually becomes apparent that the new new method is also failing some students. The pendulum swings again. My solution is to allow districts to provide a range of phonics approaches, train teachers in them and deliver them within their Tier system. That would effectively stop the pendulum in the middle.
*The social media folks have consistently ignored the fact that NAEP data indicate reading scores have been flat for decades. If that is the case, how can they possibly justify the claim that “balanced literacy” is the cause of the reading crisis? If it is, wouldn’t scores have dropped after its introduction? Again, looking at ALL the national data, the scores have remained flat. By the way, the term “balanced literacy” has no widely agreed-upon meaning, indicating that this is yet another example of the Social Media SOR folks using straw man arguments. In addition to Thomas and Johnson, see George Hruby’s information about this point. The link provided here is to the first of a multi-part series by Hruby.
The social Media version of SOR is truly “not ready for prime time”. Instead of taking what they can learn from the “other sides,” and using it, they take a my-way-or-the-highway stance. That despite the fact they have never demonstrated that synthetic phonics works with MOST kids MOST of the time. Add to that the fact that these laws strip away power that properly belongs to districts, and I think you’ll agree that states need to consider a different path for improving literacy.
My current analysis has focused almost exclusively on the issue of teaching phonics. What I first proposed 5 years ago is that because there are several approaches to teaching phonics, not just one, that is what has happened over the years, we have not always provided students the phonics instruction that fits their needs. Some students can succeed with any of the approaches. Some students really need Synthetic Phonics. Some students really need Analytic Phonics or other phonics methods. When synthetic phonics is the only phonics taught and supported, kids who need alternate methods fail, and folks notice. They begin overemphasizing one of those other approaches, and the pendulum swings. I’ve seen that happen several times during my time in education. As long as we treat the issue of teaching phonics as a dichotomy, something the social media version of SOR clearly does, we are doomed to have more pendulum swings. The problem is not just limited to phonics alone (more about that in future blogs)
This brings me back to my opening point:
“Local districts should be allowed to empower teachers by giving access to and training in ALL the tools they need to help their students’ literacy development.”
Next week, I will explore the problems created by the Social Media version of SOR and how to deal with the issue of comprehension. I’ll also look at the ideas of two major figures in the SOR world who have been critical of some of the developments on social media. Keep in mind that, as a centrist, I believe we should be drawing research-based practices from both sides (all sides?). I’ll talk about an idea I got when interviewing P.D. Pearson. Instead of taking sides, we should be taking positions. More about that next week.
Dr. Sam
Happy Reading and Writing.
The guy in the middle is taking flak from both sides.
Copyright 2026 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS
Beginning next week, I will be doing a SHORT Read All About in Post each week, suggesting things to look at to stay abreast of the ever-changing world of literacy.
I’m also in the process of lining up several interviews with literacy folks from all sides.
I also want to thank Ann Kay from Rock and Roll Reading for her patience. Because I needed to split this blog entry into two parts, I’ll delay posting her interview until the week after next.
Please be aware that this blog entry will serve as the basis for two upcoming presentations I am preparing. One is the Keynote Address for the Maryland ILA conference in March LINK, and the other is my presentation for the on-demand session for the Literacy Council of North America (LCNA)LINK