The Ever-Changing World of Literacy Part 2: What Seidenberg just said about the New Yorker article
“The instructional needs of dyslexics and nondyslexics are not the same. What is best for people with dyslexia, children who have conditions that interfere with learning to read, is not best for nondyslexics, who do not.” From Dr Seidenberg’s blog of Jan 20thLINK
INTRODUCTION: For those of you who aren’t already regular readers of this blog. My name is Dr. Sam Bommarito. I have been in education for over 6 decades. I’ve been a high school social studies teacher, a Title 1/Chapter 1 reading teacher, and a professional developer for Title I. I’ve taught virtually every reading course required for certification at the university level, including the content area reading course. I have served on numerous ILA boards and completed a two-year term on ILA’s Dina Feitelson Research Award committee. I am currently “retired,” but I continue to work in literacy. I write a weekly blog advocating a centrist view in the so-called reading wars. I have two major goals for my blog. First, I try to identify common ground among the varying views on how to teach reading and writing. Second, I try to get people from all points of view to talk to each other so they can fully understand what the “other sides” think.
Today’s blog centers around a major statement just made by Mark Seidenberg. Seidenberg is a well-known researcher and a staunch advocate of SOR. Here is what he said:
“The instructional needs of dyslexics and nondyslexics are not the same. What is best for people with dyslexia, children who have conditions that interfere with learning to read, is not best for nondyslexics, who do not.” From Seidenberg’s blog of Jan 20thLINK
I can’t really discuss the above statement without also considering his September 2025 statement about the concept of a “take-off point” for early readers. Right now. I want to give you my take on what he said and focus on what parts of his statements I agree with or partially agree with.
My take on Dr. Seidenberg’s key ideas from his September 2025 statement:
Dr. Seidenberg says early readers need a heavy dose of explicit phonics instruction. They also need activities that provide implicit learning with feedback. Eventually, readers reach a takeoff point at which their instruction should shift from explicit to implicit. THEY ARE STILL LEARNING PHONICS, but in the main, they are learning it by applying their deep background knowledge to learn the phonics conventions that they don’t yet know.
See my Sept 2025 blog, where I give a detailed analysis of what he said, including slides he presented at a conference in early 2026. LINK
My areas of agreement with what he said
My personal view on instruction is that we need both implicit/intrinsic and explicit, direct instruction. The roots of each method go back over 2,000 years. In all that time, both methods have coexisted without one ever replacing the other.
I am excited to see that Doctor Seidenberg sees the need for BOTH explicit and implicit instruction. I think his views closely track with mine. I totally agree with him that students need a heavy dose of phonics early on, so they can develop the in-depth knowledge of phonics they need to unlock words. I was especially happy to see his idea of “escape velocity”. This is the point where the child needs less direct instruction and is allowed to give themselves implicit instruction as they go about the business of figuring out words and discovering more about phonics. I’ll note that this idea is similar to Clay’s self-extending system. While not an exact match, it does give me hope that there really could be more common ground than we think.
My take on his key ideas from his January 2025 statement:
The statement has already been directly quoted. I glean two important things from it. First, not all students with reading problems are Dyslexic. Unfortunately, some SOR advocates are beginning to treat the term as if they were. I think the following research-based, peer-reviewed article by George Hrubry treating the term as meaning anyone with a reading problem has information in it that shows calling all children with a reading problem Dyslexic is an exceptionally bad idea LINK. Bottom line, there are more causes of reading problems than just those related to the individual child’s brain.
Please don’t take that to mean I think there really isn’t such a thing as dyslexia and some of the other conditions that make up the world of special education. I am one of the folks who has such a condition myself. My brain is wired differently. That is one of the reasons I have been able to succeed with many of the children I have worked with over the years. I view these differences as strengths, not disabilities. Other educators see things the same way. For instance, please read my blog about a mother-daughter team who wrote a resource book for parents of Dyslexic children. The daughter was Dyslexic. As the daughter grew up, the mother did many things to help her. She carefully documented what worked. After the daughter grew up and got her university degree, the mother-daughter team wrote a book for the parents of dyslexic children. Here is my interview with them about that book LINK. By the way, they have a new book out, and I’m scheduling another interview with them soon.
The second thing I’ve gleaned from Dr. Seidenberg’s statement is that people with dyslexia need a different kind of program than the general population. They do need intensive direct phonics instruction over an extended period of time. I agree with Seidenberg that a number of the “not dyslexic” children need to acquire a large batch of start-up information about Phonics. Once they have that, they should not be forced to delay their move to the next stage. However, not all children benefit from the direct approach. I wrote about one such child LINK. That child found synthetic phonics impossible, but thrived when he used analytic methods he thrived.
Areas slated for future discussion.
There are five kinds of phonics instruction, not just one. Here’s what the NRP reported
- Synthetic Phonics: Explicitly teaches students to convert letters (graphemes) into sounds (phonemes) and blend them to form words.
- Analytic Phonics: Teaches students to analyze letter-sound relationships in previously learned words to avoid pronouncing sounds in isolation.
- Analogy Phonics: Teaches students to use parts of known words (word families/rimes) to read unfamiliar words.
- Embedded Phonics: Teaches phonics skills implicitly during text reading, often incidental rather than explicit.
- Phonics through Spelling: Teaches students to segment words into phonemes and select letters for those sounds.
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, you wouldn’t just dump a ton of salt and pepper onto your steak because it would ruin your meal:
In the same way overdoing any one form of phonics instruction will have the same effect. It will ruin your teaching. That is why I believe the swinging pendulum does exist. I’ve seen it swing back and forth many times during my forty plus years in education. One side or the other tries to overdo their phonics approach and the educational methods that go with it. What exactly is the swinging pendulum swinging between? I believe it’s been swinging between overemphasis of one form of phonics over the other. Most often, that swing has been between analytic and synthetic phonics. In addition, the methods used to teach each kind of phonics (direct instruction vs. inquiry learning) were overemphasized. Since a picture is worth 1000 words. Here’s a picture of that thought.
What the folks in the great debate have been doing is engaging in binary thinking. This is especially true of folks talking on social media. It’s winner take all. Both sides of the reading pendulum have been guilty of ignoring the other side’s approaches to phonics and the teaching practices that support them. As a result, children have been hurt. One obvious example is that, for a time, some educators ignored synthetic phonics. Sometimes they even said phonics weren’t necessary at all. We all know how much that hurt dyslexic children.
I’d like to suggest that there’s another story to consider. That is what happens when the pendulum swings the other way? Analytic phonics and inquiry-based teaching methods are ignored. In the latest swing of the pendulum, they are not only being ignored but also being outlawed. Programs that include inquiry-based instruction have fallen victim to nationwide, state-by-state passage of laws that effectively outlaw all forms of phonics except synthetic phonics and essentially forbid inquiry-based classroom instruction. The result is that those children who need analytic phonics find themselves in the exact same place as dyslexic children were in all those years ago. Why are we doing that to those children? This is a question I’d like Doctor Seidenberg to consider. This is a question that I’d like state legislators to consider as well. There are ways to accomplish many of the things the legislators intend to do without banning all other forms of teaching, such as inquiry-based methods. Wording bills properly is critical to achieving that end.
IN CONCLUSION
That wraps up what I want to say about Doctor Seidenberg’s latest ideas. I agree with most of Doctor Seidenberg’s latest pronouncements. In the coming weeks, I’ll be presenting at various conferences, using the information in this blog as an important part of my upcoming presentations. I will also address other issues, such as the impact of social media discussions on people’s perceptions of reading. A recent study on that question found that the binary thinking (us vs. them) is so prevalent in much social media discussion that it has led to widespread misinformation about reading and how to teach it LINK. Binary thinking results in pendulum swings, not progress. I hope that peeking ahead will spark some interest in those future presentations. Here are the links to the two conferences: LITCON 2026, online, starts Jan 26th and SoMLA (State of Maryland Literacy Association) conference in Baltimore, Maryland, March 24th and 25th LINK (I’m proud to say I am the keynote for that one!) One of the interviews I have lined up will be interesting. It is by a mother daughter team who I first met when they published a book a couple years ago. The daughter was dyslexic. Over the years, the mom kept track of all the tools she used to help her. The daughter grew up and got her degree. Then the mother-daughter team wrote a book containing all the tools used to help the daughterLINK. Now they have completed a second book and I will be interviewing them soon. I can’t wait to hear what they will have to say.
In the meantime. Happy reading and writing. Hope to see some of you in person soon.
Dr. Sam
The guy in the middle taking flak from all sides 😊
Copyright 2026 by Dr. Sam Bommarito