Will Brehm  0:13
Elena Aydarova, welcome to FreshEd.

Elena Aydarova  1:32
Hello, Will.

Will Brehm  1:33
So, I want to start by asking about just some context to what’s called the reading wars, particularly in the USA, but I think they’ve sort of traveled around the world. There’s reading wars, I know, in Australia, as well. Many people these days are sort of talking about and advocating for something called the science of reading. Could you just sort of explain by way of context, what the science of reading is and how it fits into the quote, unquote, reading wars?

Elena Aydarova  1:58
Yeah. That’s a great question. So, in the US, reading wars have quite a long-standing history. Some actually dated all the way back to Horace Mann and the work that he has done after he visited Prussia. He advocated for teaching children to read whole words. At the same time, however, you know, mid 19th century, early 20th century US schools used McGuffey Readers and those were actually relying on phonics to teach children to read. So, these two approaches -one emphasizing that kids can learn to read by recognizing whole words versus kids can learn to read by using phonics or decoding or being able to connect sounds to letters and name one sound after another and figure out what the word is- those two approaches have coexisted in the US and in the English-speaking world for a while, and they have always had their ebbs and flows. In the 20th century, for a while there was a Dick and Jane series, for example, and they were very popular into the 70s. And they were the “look and say” approach, right, and there was a backlash, emphasizing that “No, we have to go back to phonics”. And in the 80s, there was actually a turn to what was now called whole language. A whole language approach kind of emphasizes meaning-based approaches to reading. So that was the turn towards using real literature to teach kids to read. However, that approach was not found to be successful. The claim was that the results dropped. And in the 90s, there was again yet another backlash against it. Phonics gets introduced through legislature and at the end of the 90s, beginning of 2000s we see federal government involvement. There are reports that are being commissioned. One was produced by the National Academy of Sciences, and other one was produced by the National Reading Panel. And all of those reports emphasize the importance of using scientific evidence to inform instruction. And National Reading Panel is what is currently used as this kind of guiding star for talking about science in science of reading. So, some advocates say that science of reading is five components of reading, which has phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, because that’s what that report laid out as key components of reading instruction. However, that is not the only definition out there. So, other advocates, for example, Emily Hanford -who’s very famous in the US for the podcasts that she put out discussing the literacy crisis and talking about the ways in which kids are not taught to read in US schools -she uses a definition that talks about a body of research in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. The Reading League -another advocacy organization- adds to that list linguistics and special education implementation science because there’s no stable definition of what it’s actually about. 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”. So, that actually makes it a little bit difficult to discuss, right because people assume there’s stability to this definition, when there really isn’t. And the last thing that I actually wanted to note is that even though these five components that come from the National Reading Panel are emphasized, people often associate science of reading with an emphasis on phonics. And that, again, is often what gets brought up. As phonics is not being used in school and that’s why we are seeing such dismal results in literacy. That claim in itself needs to be explored more deeply. But the important note that people often miss is that it was actually the National Reading Panel Report that emphasized balanced approach to instruction. So, in the section when they discussed phonics, they actually say we can’t emphasize one approach over the other, we need to make sure that multiple approaches are present in classrooms. So, that’s worth remembering as a background so that when people emphasize that National Reading Panel gave us the settled science, that settled science actually use the term balanced in their presentation of it.

Will Brehm  6:09
Is there any group or individual that advocates a science of reading that means the whole language approach? If it can mean anything, are there people that actually go the other direction?

Elena Aydarova  6:22
There are now some academics who will say that they use “SCIENCE OF READING”, as all caps, to kind of acknowledge that there is a trend to emphasize science to actually promote particular curriculum packages, or assessment packages, and so on. And they would use science of reading without all caps to emphasize solidarity with other researchers and to actually call for a more comprehensive approach to what it means to do research on reading. Because part of the challenge in what’s happening is that there are certain findings that are being dismissed. And it is qualitative studies, it is studies conducted by literacy researchers that are being dismissed. And it is their way to say we can work with what neuroscientists have to offer but we also have to acknowledge that there are other ways of knowing that have importance for the classroom, and we have to incorporate it back into the science of reading as we move forward.

Will Brehm  7:23
So, despite this notion of science of reading, meaning so many different things -I think in one of your articles, you mentioned that it’s an empty signifier. It’s sort of you fill it with whatever you want it to mean in the end. So, despite that sort of ambiguity when it comes to what it actually is, how widespread is it in the United States?

Elena Aydarova  7:43
So, Education Week has been tracking the bills that are being introduced and passed. So, at the end of last year, 2023, they reported that there are 39 states that have passed science of reading bills. And surprisingly, the most recent update is actually 37. So, I don’t know if somebody dropped out or what’s happening, but somehow their numbers are fluctuating. So, that’s one way to think about it. There’s also another way to think about it, and that’s the level of advocacy and activist organizations across the country. So, in that regard, for example, one of the groups that has been very active in supporting these bills is Decoding Dyslexia. It’s an organization that brings together parents who advocate for the rights of children with dyslexia. They now have chapters in all the states and in several provinces in Canada. And the same can be said about The Reading League, the nonprofit that I’ve already mentioned, that was created in 2016 with this explicit purpose of advocating for the science of reading. They, in fact, are talking about ways in which they could expand internationally. And from the interviews that I’ve conducted, they have gotten the invites to see if they could do something in Australia, so they might already be reaching there. And the last thing that I’ll add to this, you know, one of the key roles played in this campaign has been Facebook, and there’s a group that is called “Science of Reading: What I should have learned in college”, and they have 200,000 members now, and it’s international. There are people who are joining that group from Singapore, you know, from UK and New Zealand, Australia. So, this is a movement that is growing by day, and Emily Hanford was invited to give a talk in New Zealand. So, the idea is traveling around the world.

Will Brehm  9:24
Right. And this is where a lot of your research comes in. You’re not actually doing research on, you know, which is the better approach or what is the best way to learn reading per se, you’re looking at this science of reading as sort of this globally circulating idea or at least a circulating idea in the US and trying to understand how it actually gains purchase to become a bill, to become legislated in 39 states, and you zoom in on the state of Tennessee. Can you give us the backstory to what ends up becoming called the Literacy Success Act, which was passed in February 2021?

Elena Aydarova  10:00
Yeah, absolutely. So, for me the story of that bill actually started at the summit that was organized by Excel in Ed in 2019. So, Excel in Ed, also known as Foundation for Excellence in Education is an organization that was started by Jeb Bush in 2008. And his vision for that organization was that he would bring in educational reformers for conversations about what needs to change in educational policy in the United States, primarily, however, one of his frequent visitors is actually Andreas Schleicher, who comes and talks about what OECD does. But I think he also takes ideas about the directions that OECD should take, although that needs to be empirically tested. But what Jeb Bush through Excel in Ed has been advocating for are familiar things -charter schools, vouchers, expansion of alternative routes into teaching, when Common Core was popular Common Core was supported by that organization.

Will Brehm  10:54
Could you explain what Common Core is to our listeners who might not be from the United States?

Elena Aydarova  10:58
Yeah. So, the Common Core State Standards was kind of a common framework that was created throughout 2000s and introduced in early 2010s, in the US to kind of create a shared understanding of what all children should learn and be able to do in schools. And although the promise of it was that it would create quality education, there were a lot of questions about how those were developed and created, particularly educators were concerned that those were developed behind closed doors. There was massive involvement from philanthropies, from the corporate sector, business sector had a lot of influence on them. And so eventually what it came out to be is that it was pushed for increased standardized testing and tightening of curriculum. And because of that, there were states that moved away from Common Core State Standards. Because education is considered to be a state level activity in the US, and it’s believed that those policies should be developed by states rather than the federal government, there were a number of states who felt that it was federal overreach; that standardizing education was not the appropriate way to go. What moving away meant in practice is very different for different contexts, right? Some states only changed the name, some states actually rewrote the standards, some actually tried to discard them altogether, but the bottom line is that those who tried to introduce those standards now say, we can’t really have anything in common anymore. So, Tennessee said, “This is federal overreach. We are our own state, we believe in local control, and therefore we are not going to follow those standards”, and they rewrote them and kind of aligned them to what they felt were their priorities and called them Tennessee Standards of College and Career Readiness.

Will Brehm  12:46
Okay, right. And then in the lead up to this, as they were trying to legislate what ends up becoming called the Literacy Success Act, the context here is that they had Common Core, they moved away from Common Core, but there’s these organizations that are working quite closely and for quite a long time advocating particular ideas of how reading should look, how government should be involved in education. So, can you sort of continue on with that story?

Elena Aydarova  13:10
So, it’s two parallel stories, right? So, with the idea of Common Core State Standards, there are companies that emerge that are creating curriculum products that they claim will allow them to implement those standards. So, one of those organizations for example is Common Core, Inc. They designed a very popular math curriculum and an ELA curriculum that is known as Wit & Wisdom. Another company is Amplify; they purchased the rights for Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum from Core Knowledge Foundation. That curriculum was originally developed by E.D. Hirsch, but they marketed it as something that can be implemented in alignment with Common Core State Standards. However, when Common Core Standards all of a sudden face massive backlash, these companies now have to remarket their products right? And so, Common Core, Inc changes their name, they now call themselves Great Minds, right, distancing themselves from the standards? Amplify stops talking about common core state standards on their website, and they now talk about ways in which their curriculum is aligned with the science of reading. So, now we see the science of reading kind of rising in policy contexts as the solution to the problem of low reading achievement in schools. So, that’s what’s happening with the curriculum companies. And in Tennessee what we see happening is again, back to Excel in Ed, they have a summit and at that summit, Kate Walsh from National Council on Teacher Quality, NCTQ, Maria Marie from the Reading League and Penny Schwinn Tennessee Commissioner for Education are on the same panel talking about the way the reading war should be ended. And two months after that meeting, there is a bill that gets introduced in Tennessee legislature that mandates science of reading as the only approach to reading instruction that should be allowed in the States. While they’re meeting at Excel in Ed, the House of Representatives, their House Education Committee had a meeting, and they had a group that is called Tennesseans for Quality Early Education. They came in and brought in administrators who implemented the curriculum that was designed from Common Core, right core knowledge language, arts, Wit &  Wisdom, and these administrators talked about ways in which they have seen great results because they implemented science of reading, right? So, all of a sudden, there’s this substitution. They were implementing these curricula, and they wanted these curricula but when they come in to testify, they actually are talking about how science of reading works rather than curricula products. When legislators ask them what science of reading means they still go back to naming the curricula and discussing how the curricula is sequenced and scripted and how it supports the teachers but, in the end, it is this conversation that keeps switching back and forth to science and curricula, science and curricula. In February when the bill was actually introduced, there was quite a bit of backlash. Teacher professional associations were concerned that teachers had seen too much reform, there was a concern that Tennessee kept reforming reading and what is science? What is science of reading? That seems like a very restrictive notion. And as there are debates in the media, there’s also debates in the legislature, right. And some of the legislators again, this is the House, where the bill was primarily debated, they were concerned that the state would mandate only one approach. And so, they asked for a practitioner perspective. And the Commissioner of Education said “Yes, that can be arranged”. And so, the next time they had a session, they brought in administrators who talked about how the science of reading worked, except they kept talking about the same curriculum products that were already discussed in October. And it turned out that they belonged to the same network. And that network is called Lift Network. It was created by Score, one of the policy tanks in Tennessee, and Score worked with TNTP, which was formerly known as The New Teacher Project. They call themselves a profit generating nonprofit that was created by Michelle Rhee to revolutionize teaching, change how teaching is done. And they’ve become an advocate for particular curricula. They selected the curricula that should be implemented, they tested that curriculum 15 districts, and now some of the administrators from those districts were testifying to talk about how science of reading works, even though science of reading does not show up in any of the reports of these organizations until the year that science of reading is debated in legislature.

Will Brehm  13:13
Wow. I mean, it’s just so kind of convoluted in a way and messy. And like you said, there’s these two parallel stories that then converge. And so, am I getting this correct, that basically these different companies that created curriculum projects to implement the state standards, and the Common Core years ago basically shifted how they talked about those products, but didn’t necessarily change those products?

Elena Aydarova  17:57
Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly what happened. Because for example, Wit & Wisdom that Great Mind produces, it actually is a curriculum that uses trade books, meaning, if you think their products through the lens of reading wars, you would actually think that they’re much more closely aligned to the whole language approach, right? Because it’s the beautiful trade books, and that are not necessarily arranged in any kind of order -well, I mean, there are difficulty levels, but it’s still not strictly decodable books that are used in phonics-based approaches. And Wit & Wisdom in reality has no phonics component at all. Their marketing materials say that to teach foundational skills, you have to purchase separate phonics-based curriculum. So, to actually teach kids to read, you need something else, you have to supplement this curriculum with something else. And kind of going back to the messy story of what happened in Tennessee, because the backlash was so strong, the bills still move through, but legislators dropped signs of reading from the legislature. So, the bill no longer had that phrase, but it had foundational skills as the main requirement that the State would now emphasize. And the irony, again, is that curricula like Wit &  Wisdom that have no foundational skills in them now become mandated by the state right. So, there’s all those contradictions packed together in this movement.

Will Brehm  19:28
And how did some of the politicians take it? Politicians of course are not educational researchers. They’re probably not too up to date with the academic research, let’s say on different approaches to teaching reading, and yet here they are being sort of bombarded with a very coordinated advocacy group and you know, rebranding from pretty big corporations to push certain products on them. How did they respond? You said that there was a backlash but to what effect? What were they questioning? And did some of them just simply go along with what was being pushed?

Elena Aydarova  20:04
Yeah. That’s another fascinating story because in Tennessee, in particular, there’s certainly division among party lines, because it was Democrats who were more likely to challenge and question. And another thing that is interesting about GS politics is that people who end up running for office come from different walks of life. So, in fact, one of the representatives on the Education Committee was a former teacher. And so, she would actually say, “I have tried to teach kids to read, and I can tell you that phonics is boring, and they will act out if you try to force it on them”. And of course, nobody really listened to what she had to say. However, I also have to say that it was quite interesting observing those interactions, and I had access to video recordings, so I was able to watch and rewatch what was happening. And you could see that there were people who are as Erving Goffman says, “the insider team” -the people who are promoting this bill- and there were people who were “outside” and even though they belonged to the same party, they actually were questioning. So, there were quite a few Republican representatives who would raise questions and they would be like, “Wait, why are you all from the same network? Why do we keep hearing this Lift thing? Did y’all just decide randomly to show up here? Or did someone tell you to come?” So, they’re asking fairly difficult questions. And another thing that was also interesting in those deliberations is that some of them would ask, are you trying to bring us back to Common Core? Is this about Common Core? And the response would be “No, this has nothing to do with Common Core State Standards at all. There is actually a line in the bill that says this will not bring back Common Core”. So, they attempted to question perhaps not always challenge but nevertheless engage in a critical conversation about it. But as you already pointed out, A) the story is really messy, and B) there are so many moving parts to it that even when you try to critique and challenge it, knowing how to put so many different pieces together is very difficult. And if you think about, again, elected officials in the United States, you know, they go from one committee to another. And there’s one issue from another, so no one necessarily has the time to sit down and really investigate this matter deeply. And one other thing that I will add to this, I saw this happening as I was researching this, and then I later saw confirmation because the commissioner of education gave a presentation and she mentioned that there was a group that was involved in this process, when again, Tennessee was debating this bill, and the name of that group is Knowledge Matters Campaign. And they also were started around 2015-2016 and the stated purpose of the organization is to promote knowledge-building curricula or knowledge-building approaches to reading instruction. But when you actually talk to the folks from the campaign, they’ll say, “Well, you know, we are ostensibly a marketing campaign”. And what happens with that organization is publishers who now claim that they’re aligned with science of reading has paid for what Knowledge Matters Campaign calls, National School Tour. And so they go to states, and they go to the schools that have implemented these specific curricula -so, Core Knowledge Language Arts, or Wit & Wisdom or EL Education- and then they write up these beautiful stories that come as if they were written by administrators, or superintendents, or principals, and they publish them across a wide variety of outlets. And so, then when questions arise, well, has this ever been tried before? Does this actually work? The commissioner of education was able to say yes, in fact, here are all the stories about how well this works in schools. So, you know, there’s so many ways in which there’s a story being constructed. And it is so hard to get yourself out of that story. Anytime, when you ask a critical question there’s someone who comes in with yet another story that proves that this now works. So, Knowledge Matters Campaign has been quite effective, and their work has been used extensively to convince legislators that this was the right way to go. And now, they have developed rubrics that other states are using to select the curricula that should be implemented as part of science of reading implementation. And the way the rubric is set up, it’s very narrow in how it defines its criteria so that only select few curricula would fit that bill.

Will Brehm  24:22
And those curricula are presumably being sold to states by a company?

Elena Aydarova  24:26
The same curricula, that Knowledge Matters Campaign has been advocating for, many of these curriculums are the ones that have been tried in Tennessee and have been adopted since the bills passed.

Will Brehm  24:37
So, I want to go back to Tennessee and this law called the Literacy Success Act, and as you said, it doesn’t include science of reading, it includes foundational skills. Given that it’s so sort of messy, and that people are applying their meaning to these different terms; what on earth is in that legislation? What did they come to in the end? How are they understanding foundational skills and any of the other terms that they might be using in the final product?

Elena Aydarova  25:08
So, that’s actually a fascinating part because what they came down to is a very delicate dance of saying that the districts would only be allowed to use curricula that are aligned with foundational literacy skills, because that is the approach that the state is adopting. And that curricula have to be approved by the Department of Education. So, only the list the Department of Education allows can be used to inform districts choices. That’s one of the things. There is quite a bit about testing; that children have to be tested. And if they are not performing at grade level, they have to receive supplemental services, parents have to be notified, parents have to be involved in determining what will be done to address student’s needs, there will be summer camps. Teacher education programs are now required to align themselves with science of reading. And so, part of that bill in particular had the requirement that the standards for literacy have to be revised and teacher education programs have to introduce curricula that are aligned with that. Interestingly enough, that bill also included a component that required the state to conduct a landscape analysis of teacher education programs that involved questions about the costs of what it means to attend teacher education. And that’s actually -it seems so random included in this bill but at the same time, the science of reading movement comes not only with the curriculum reform, but also with a tax on teacher education. So, there’s very much several things going on that are working in tandem, that ultimately work to expand private sector involvement in public education, both at K through 12. and higher education levels.

Will Brehm
And what would be the implications for initial teacher education?

Elena Aydarova
So, that’s interesting because on the one hand, there is a call to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for how they teach science of reading, and whether they have revised their curricula to align what future teachers are learning in their courses with what has been discovered in science. There is also a push to make sure that teachers are trained to use the specific curricula that we have already discussed. So, there’s a push to make sure that teachers learn core knowledge language arts curriculum, and Wit & Wisdom and EL education, which historically, teacher education programs in the United States have tried to stay away from, right, because it has always been the understanding that districts have the freedom to choose their curriculum. And therefore, colleges of education should prepare teachers as professionals who are able to exercise their expertise in how they implement or design their own curriculum. And this notion that teachers can design their own is actually one of the things that is currently being under attack. The assumption is that teachers cannot design anything themselves that will be of high quality. And therefore, they should be taught only to use the curricula that have already been labeled as high quality in policy circles. And it goes back to the same list that I’ve already mentioned. However, there’s also a twist with the most recent wave of reforms. And we see this particularly in Wisconsin where legislature has laid out that only programs that follow the standards of International Dyslexia Association would be allowed to issue literacy licenses for teachers. And in the state of Wisconsin, that actually means that it will be primarily private sector actors who can provide licensure to future teachers, because most of the state schools actually are not following those standards. Some of them are now going through the process of accreditation through those standards but those standards are outside of the professional accreditation standards that are typically used in the state. And the last final thing that I will add to this is that in Wisconsin, legislature actually also mandated that teacher education faculty, so these are now professors, be retrained using the science of reading models. In particular, there’s a product that has been created by Louisa Moats that called LETRS. And so, teacher education faculty are required to undergo that training to be allowed to teach literacy courses. And this is again a private product. It’s created by a private company, and it is distributed by a private company that colleges of education now have to somehow figure out how to work with.

Will Brehm  29:50
It’s just absolutely amazing. It’s like a whole new dimension of the privatization of education, which has been going on for decades. And it’s just sort of this new moment where these old actors that we’ve heard about, like Michelle Rhee and the Koch brothers and Common Core being sort of repackaged and redesigned and remarketed, and just finding new avenues to change the way in which states operate, schools operate, and higher education operates. It’s just kind of amazing. So, I guess the final question is to go back to Tennessee to sort of end there. That legislation has now been enforced for the last three years. Do we know any outcomes? For instance, have reading scores improved because of this law, because of these curricula that have now been sort of mandated by the State? And then secondly, since it is a form of privatization, do we have any sense of how much money has sort of shifted from the public legislature, the public treasury in Tennessee, to these private companies?

Elena Aydarova  30:54
Yeah. So, you know, it’s actually really difficult to talk about outcomes. It’s not that politicians wouldn’t like to. Because if you think about it, the bill was passed 2021, there was training that was put in place, and so kindergarteners, who would have started around 2022, when things would be mostly in place, have not yet reached the stage where they would be tested on assessments outside of the State. So again, the Commissioner of Education has claimed that there has been an increase in test scores. But publicly available data suggests that the increase is 1%. So, I can’t really say that it is because of this. So, that is hard to really pinpoint and discuss. Now, in terms of the money, the reform itself cost, officially 100 million, that’s how much the state dedicated to this reform. But again, you have to contextualize it as contracts that went to so many different private entities rather than direct investment in struggling schools. And one way in which we can think about it is, A) for example, Amplify -one of the curricula core knowledge language arts that gets promoted across the states- is actually one of the most expensive curriculum packages. So, if you think about the role of the state, right, the state becomes the protector of private profits, but it is also rewriting the market rules, right? In the market, you should be able to compete. There’s no competition. Competitors are being eliminated left and right. And it is the state that is playing the central role in eliminating the competitors. And back to the expenses; one thing that we do know, for example, is that professional development in Tennessee was provided by TNTP. So, they were there in the beginning with a pilot providing support for the implementation of this curricula, then they get the contract to offer professional development to absolutely all the teachers in the state. That professional development was called Sounds First. It was critiqued for actually the lack of science in how it was designed but they got the initial contract for 8 million, and then that had to be extended for an additional 8 million. So, 16 million goes to a nonprofit, that also happens to generate profits. And that’s what we can actually track. So, massive expenses and yet, what will be the final outcome is still a matter of time and more intense investigation. And I will actually also say that the problem now is also how we have reframed the conversation on reading, right? How we now care about standardized tests and standardized assessments. And you know, it’s all about students failing and not performing at particular levels. But for example, NAPE also collects data on how much kids read for pleasure and their free time. And there is a drop, a massive drop in percentages from the data that was collected in 2012 to the data that was collected most recently. And yet, we’re not talking about the fact that a good third of the kids at the age of 13 report that they never read for fun at all, which should be a matter of concern, too, right? So, not all the metrics that we are using or publicly discussing actually gets to the matter of what reading is really about, and what we should care as a society. Because if kids are abandoning reading altogether, we might have a bigger issue than just whether it’s science of reading or not.

Will Brehm  34:10
Well, Elena Aydarova, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. It’s just absolutely wonderful to talk and please come back on the show when you’ve done more and more research into this really fascinating topic. Thanks again.

Elena Aydarova  34:22
Thank you so much for having me.

Want to help translate this show? Please contact info@freshedpodcast.com

Related Guest Publications/Projects

Science of reading mythologies in the education reform movement

Teacher educators disrupting neoliberal reforms of teacher education…

Divergent chronotopes in English language teacher education

Mentioned

Lectures on education – Horace Mann
Whole language approach

National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read 

What constitutes a science of reading instruction?

APM Reports: Reading – Emily Hanford

What is the science of reading – Reading League

Which states have passed ‘science of reading’ laws”? – Education Week

Decoding Dyslexia

Science of Reading: What I should have learned in college – Facebook group
The Tennessee Literacy Success Act

Foundation for excellence in Education (ExcelinEd)

Andrea Schleicher
Common Core State Standards

Tennessee College Readiness Testing

Great Minds – Wit & Wisdom

Tennesseans for Quality Early Education
The LIFT Network
The New Teacher Project (TNTP)

Knowledge Matters Campaign  School tours
NAEP long-term trend assessment results: Reading and Mathematics 

Recommended

A history of the American reading textbook

History of the reading wars

Phonic versus look-and-say training in beginning reading

Reading–Which approach?

Reading reform across America

A battle over school reform: Michelle Rhee vs. Diane Ravitch

What is knowledge building curriculum?
The education of Michelle Rhee – PBS Documentary

The science of reading progresses

Teaching reading is more than a science

Teaching reading is more than a science: It’s also an art

Have any useful resources related to this show? Please send them to info@freshedpodcast.com