Dave Ziffer on the
"International Reading Association"

From: "David Ziffer" <DaveZiffer@ProjectPro.com>
To: stareditor@starnews.com
Subject: Thanks for sockin' it to the International Reading Association
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000

Dear Indianapolis Star (www.starnews.com):

I do not live in Indianapolis and so I unfortunately missed your May 4 editorial regarding the International Reading Association, but from the May 6 response of IRA board member Timothy Shanahan (which I found on the IRA web site at www.reading.org/2000/conv_news3.html) I must presume that you really socked it to 'em.

The IRA board members are getting better and better at covering up their tracks during those increasingly frequent moments when the spotlight is being shined upon them. In the face of mounting public anger about the never-ending failure of the American teaching establishment, together with increasinly widespread dissemination of information about the organizations who are responsible for it, IRA board members are adopting an increasingly defensive posture. And now with Mr. Shanahan's letter we see that they seem to have changed their stripes entirely, and are claiming to be phonics advocates. Not only that - they are claiming to have been phonics advocates for a long time!

Of course we do not need to look too far outside the spotlight to see the true nature of the IRA. For example we could click our way over to the IRA's Wisconsin affiliate, where we can see a more realistic picture of the IRA's position on phonics. At www.wsra.org/ford2.html IRA member Mike Ford compares the research evidence supporting phonics and phonemic awareness to the myths regarding "Alligators in the Sewers". One click away from this page is a set of downloadable overheads which the WSRA is distributing to its members specifically for the purpose of discrediting phonics-based reading programs througout the state of Wisconsin. On adjacent pages Mr. Ford distributes other materials designed to discourage the use of Direct Instruction curricula, which during the past 30 years of research have been conclusively proven to be the most effective form of beginning reading instruction.

Or we could visit the IRA's Utah chapter and see its position paper on phonemic awareness (at http://catsis.weber.edu/ucira/phonemic.htm). This lovely little piece is just filled with pearls of wisdom, like, "there is no single definition of phonemic awareness," and "the precise relationship between phonemic awareness and reading acquisition remains under investigation." Yes you too can be the proud owner of this masterpiece, at just 50c per copy (plus $3 shipping and handling).

Perhaps the most instructive site among the IRA state affiliates is the West Virginia one (www.inetone.net/wvra), which says simply, "Pardon our mess!"

For a more rounded view of the IRA you can visit www.reading.org/councils/state_assoc.html at the national IRA site, which directs you to all the state affiliates. You can click through these sites one by one and find endless platitudes about books, love of learning, storytelling, and so on and so forth, but precious little about the core and heart of beginning reading instruction (phonics). How can an organization which purports to support so complex and difficult a subject as teaching phonics have so very little to say about it?

For dessert you can visit the policy statements at the IRA's national web site. For example at www.reading.org/advocacy/policies/phonemic.html you can read the sum total of the IRA's position on phonemic awareness, which is basically that the IRA is afraid that teachers might start using programs that overemphasize it. Or you can read the IRA position on phonics (www.reading.org/advocacy/policies/phonics.html) which warns against "exaggerated claims found in the media blaming the failure of students in learning to read on the inattention to phonics in beginning reading instruction." As the final topper, you can feast on the IRA's "Honoring Children's Rights to Excellent Reading Instruction" (at www.reading.org/advocacy/policies/MADMMID.html), which is a thinly veiled declaration of the rights of reading teachers to do whatever they damn well please.

Yes, the IRA are a bunch of phonics advocates. And Mussolini was a libertarian. And Jim Jones was a great religious leader. And Marilyn Manson is a positive role model for our youth.

Thanks for sockin' it to 'em.

Dave Ziffer
DaveZiffer@ProjectPro.com

-----Original Message-----
From: David Gill
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002
To: David Ziffer
Subject: RE: di: RE: naivete regarding the IRA

You paint the IRA with a very broad brush, David. Do you have data to support your contentions?

David Gill



Date: 4/27/2002
From: DaveZiffer


In response to David Gill's statement, "You paint the IRA with a very broad brush, David. Do you have data to support your contentions?":

The IRA was formed in 1956 by William S. Gray, who by that time had spent 25 years together with Scott Foresman company building a publishing empire based on his "Dick and Jane" books, with which he (and friends) had managed to essentially eradicate phonics instruction in the classrooms of the English-speaking world. The IRA was formed with Gray's financial help by merging two preexisting organizations to form a new one that would more adequately suit his purposes.

The reason Gray formed the IRA is that in the previous year (1955), Rudolf Flesch had published "Why Johnny Can't Read," the first major book to expose the fallacies of the anti-phonics crowd and the enormity of their penetration into the public schools. This book occupied slot #8 in the top-ten sellers list for 1955 (see the non-fiction list at www.caderbooks.com/best50.html). Flesch scandalized the entire education profession, and threatened Gray's continued prosperity and the prosperity of his publishing empire.

The IRA was founded specifically to combat Flesch and his many successors, and most especially to dupe the public into believing that Flesch (and critics like him) were misguided fools obsessed with destroying the education profession. Gray became the IRA's first president, and since Gray the IRA has had a long line of anti-phonics presidents (you can see the entire list at www.ira.org/dir/ex/pastpres.html). Among them are:

1955-56: William S. Gray : Founder and primary author of the Dick and Jane series (which got its start through a year of gratis heavy promotion in the NEA Journal during 1930-31; read about it at www.sntp.net/education/look_say_2.htm or get Blumenfeld's book that is mentioned at that site). Gray is certainly on of tne of the most vitriolic anti-phonics voices of the 20th century.

1959-60: A. Sterl Artley: Co-author with Gray on some of the Dick and Jane books. Another vitriolic purveyor of anti-phonics philosophy, not only in his textbooks but also in his scholarly papers. (When I first started complaining to my superintendent about the lack of phonics instruction in our district, he supplied me with a written rebuttal accompanied by an article by Artley. The article was a travesty of unfounded assumptions and fallacious logic from end to end. I responded with a multi-page letter to my super that dismantled Artley's arguments paragraph by paragraph, to which my super never responded. I am always amazed at how the the denizens of whole language will attack Project Follow Through as useless because of its advanced age [published in 1977], and yet when defending their own philosophies they are ready, willing, and able to pull out articles written in the 1950s).

1962-63: Morton Botel: Another prominent defender of anti-phonics philosophy: "Individuals and groups with dubious credentials have taken it upon themselves to attack American reading instruction over the past decade with the simple thesis that there is nothing wrong with reading instruction that their brands of phonics won't solve." - "The Reading Teacher" (an IRA publication), January 1963.

1964-65: Theodore Clymer: Conducted reading research which, in dramatic conflict with that of most other reading researchers, demonstrated that phonics generalizations are of little use because they are generally unreliable. This is the kind of research that the IRA publicizes. The construction in the 1970s of computer programs that successfully decode English (for a sample see www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/voices.html) demonstrated the fallaciousness of Clymer's methods and of the closely held beliefs of a whole generation of reading teachers, although it didn't apparently influence them any.

1972-73 William K. Durr: Senior author of the Houghton-Mifflin textbook series of this period; need we say more? For an interesting perspective on Durr and the IRA (and related associations) in general, read www.riggsinst.org/cows.htm.

1978-79: Dorothy S. Strickland prominent WL author and supporter, primary author of the whole-language "HBJ Language" textbook series.

1979-80 Roger C. Farr: Co-author with Strickland (above) on the "HBJ Language" textbook series.

1981-82: Kenneth S. Goodman: what is there to say? Incidentally, Goodman was publishing his extreme anti-phonics views on www.readingonline.org, the IRA's sister site, until about mid-2000.

1985-86: John C. Manning: Served as senior instructional consultant for Scott Foresman for approximately the past 35 years. (Scott Foresman are the same wonderful people who brought us Gray's Dick-and-Jane series; arguably today they are the world's foremost and radically whole-language oriented textbook publisher).

1992-93: Marie M. Clay: Founder and developer of Reading Recovery; what more can one say?

1997-98: John J. Pikulski: Yet another major WL-type, who manages to speak volumes on the subject of early intervention with struggling readers, yet somehow manages to avoid the topic of phonics altogether. While paying lip service to the topic when asked specifically to comment on it, the subject never seems to turn up in his running texts.

1999-00: Carol M. Santa: Claims that the phonics/wl debate is "overblown" and that a "combination" of the two methods is always appropriate (but she never explains how a philosophy that places phonics expressly as its first priority can be combined with a competing philosophy that expressly puts phonics as its last priority). She's an avid supporter of the works of her strictly WL contemporaries, such as Cunningham, Allington, Strickland, etc., all of whom have lately taken to disguising their pure WL philosophy using book and chapter titles that misleadingly suggest that they support the teaching of phonics (but when you get into them you realize it is invariably the "strictly incidental" kind, just like in the bad old pure-WL days).

In between these prominent anti-phonics IRA presidents were liberally interspersed many prolific authors of children's literature and poetry - people who didn't particularly have an anti-phonics axe to grind, but certainly none that I could find that would provide any semblance of balance against the group mentioned above. Among the non-authors there were some occasional voices of moderation, but certainly there has never been anyone like Patrick Groff or Louisa Moats in the senior ranks of the IRA to balance the extreme opposite types that have tended to dominate the IRA leadership.

The IRA has consistently spewed forth anti-phonics rhetoric in its publications. In fact it also did so quite publicly on its web site until mid-2000, when the National Reading Panel report came out, after which the rabidly anti-phonics stuff suddenly disappeared (I presume that it was out of fear of seeming too far-out; prior to the emergence of the NRP report, the IRA's radical anti-phonics statements could easily have been considered merely ordinary reflections of mainstream practice).

The IRA maintains state affiliates, most notably the Wisconsin IRA (at www.wsra.org) that are simply vitriolic in their anti-phonics and anti-DI stance even today. (Spend a couple of hours cruising this web site, for example - click the "Advocacy" button.)

In essentially all of the IRA publications I have ever read that do not expressly attack phonics, the subject of phonics has always been treated with a "well ... if you absolutely must ..." type of attitude - it is ALWAYS discussed with grave reservations and plenty of expressions of fear that teachers will overemphasize it or teach any of it in isolation (heaven forbid that we should tell a kid what the sound of "m" is without first having given him a book to read). Outside of these "we'll tolerate some of it with great reservations" types of communications and the articles that condemn it outright, I never see phonics discussed at all.

The closest thing to an encouragement of phonics that I've ever seen from the IRA is the joint position statement that it issued with the NAEYC in 1998: www.naeyc.org/resources/position_statements/psread0.htm, although interestingly the word "phonics" doesn't appear anywhere in it. And what is the nature of this ringing endorsement? Well, buried within hundreds of lines of text promoting all sorts of other things, many of which have no demonstrated correlation to reading proficiency (let alone a causal relationship) is one bullet item in one list of things that ought to be included in a program that promotes literacy:

• a balanced instructional program that includes systematic code instruction along with meaningful reading and writing activities;

Alongside this nearly hidden bullet item is an admonition to avoid "intensive drill and practice on isolated skills for groups or individuals," in direct contradiction to research, practical experience, and common sense.

You should really take a look at this document. It is a perfect illustration of the milder side of the IRA. You see in order to kill phonics instruction worldwide you don't need to be grandstanding against it every single day. You can simply publish mountains and mountains of other material - hundreds of thousands of pages of text, over the years - without ever once publishing an article that offers direct encouragement or practical advice to teachers who might want to incorporate some phonics into their curriculum.

Now I find that quite amazing, don't you? I would think that a balanced, rational organization that serves reading teachers would, at least in a few of its issues every year, offer some phonics tips or reviews of phonics-based curricula, don't you? You would think that an organization that purports to further the interests of reading teachers would somewhere, in its penultimate statement about how the teaching of reading should be conducted, manage to insert the word "phonics" just once? (Incidentally the IRA has never minced words when disparaging phonics - in THOSE articles, the word "phonics" is always used explicitly.)

Aside from all this, and finally, I have spoken to phonics-oriented people who have attended IRA conferences, only to discover that they have been generally the objects of ridicule by the other attendees (any stories from this loop?).

So ... is that enough evidence for you?

-- Dave
DaveZiffer@ProjectPro.com