After ten years and hundreds of millions in spending, why can’t Johnny read? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Legislative leaders are baffled. We all should be. After pouring more than $200 million additional dollars into helping our children read at grade level, they (and we) want to know when we are going to see results. Just before Thanksgiving we learned that the 2021 test results showed only 47 percent of third-grade students were proficient in grade-level reading. End of grade tests further demonstrated that 53 percent of students in grades three through eight were "not proficient" in grade level reading.

    Who is to blame? Is it the children, teachers, parents, educators, legislators or the public? The answer is YES. We all have a role to play in helping our children to read, but we are obviously failing. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger sounded the alarm in 2012, correctly assessing that in the first three grades students learn to read. After that, they read to learn. If they can't read, they can't learn. Berger led the "Read to Achieve" initiative a decade ago, and since that time North Carolina has implemented several new or revised initiatives when results didn't improve.

    Out latest reading program comes from Mississippi. We've always thanked God for Mississippi, since they traditionally kept North Carolina out of being last place among the states in education achievement. But the Magnolia State implemented a program named LETRS, an acronym standing for "Language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling." Desperate for anything that would work, our state subscribed. Forgive me, but a closer examination of their reading proficiency scores shows they aren't dramatically better than ours. Their "science of reading training" requires our 44,000 elementary teachers to undergo 160 hours of training.

    It's time to call baloney on reading training being a "science." It's a discipline, but science requires experimentation. We don't need to experiment. We know the fundamentals, like blocking and tackling in football. When I was coming along in the 1950s, we knew what needed to be done. It worked then and will now if we stick to the fundamentals. Perhaps some of you can remember the "Fun with Dick and Jane" reading series.

    In each of the 12 books in the series we were introduced to new words, new people and increasingly complex and longer sentences. Each child read out loud every day, even in classes of 20 or more children. We had a teacher, sometimes a teaching aid or "student" teacher. Others volunteered to assist. How many times did we hear "sound it out" when we encountered a new word? We know phonics works!

    There were 10 to 20 new vocabulary words each week and I still remember the flash cards. Mother drilled us to make sure we knew and could pass every Friday's spelling test. If a student didn't do well, he or she received remedial help during recess or after school. Talk about incentive to learn!

    Teachers communicated regularly with parents of a child who was struggling, and it was expected that parents spend time listening to their child read to them. They don't get a pass, even in single-parent homes. Somehow parents can find time to hear children read. Without all today's testing we knew which children were progressing well and which weren't. The importance of reading needs constant emphasis.

    So, let's discontinue all the cutesy sounding initiatives du jour and get back to basics - the same education basics our constitution guarantees each child. It's just basic instruction, repetition and time spent with each student. If we don't have enough money to put a teaching assistant or mentor in every k-3 classroom let's allocate the roughly $1.9 billion in remaining ARPA (American Recovery Rescue Plan) funds to do so. And if that's still not enough, we can use some of the $6 billion in reserves from our state treasury. We saved it for a rainy day, and if this isn't a rainy crisis our priorities are out of kilter.

    The final step may be the hardest. Let's acknowledge that learning to read is just as important as a child's psyche in early years and stop automatically promoting children who can't read at grade level. Their psyches will be more damaged knowing they aren't keeping up with their peers. We know children who were held back in first or second grade, got the basic foundation they needed to graduate college, and became accomplished adults. Let's toughen up and hold back any child who isn't reading at grade level.

    Education is the single most important function of state government, amounting to 58 cents of every tax dollar our state spends. Let's put our efforts where our money is and start treating reading like the priority it is. We should never again get a report card like the recent NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) results that show that our state scores were the lowest they have been since the 1990s.

    Are you reading this? If so, let's get to work.

      Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina Broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965. He recently retired from writing, producing and moderating the statewide half-hour TV program NC SPIN that aired 22 1/2 years. Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com.