“The Right to Read” is Horse Manure
The title of today’s post comes from Thomas Ultican’s article of the same name. In it, he goes down a similar road that I’ve been traveling, that the so-called “science of reading” isn’t scientific at all and masks a sinister agenda.
The article criticizes the recently released 80-minute video titled "The Right to Read," which it claims uses false data interpretations to assert a non-existent reading crisis in America. The film was created by Jenny Mackenzie and produced by LeVar Burton, and it is narrated by Kareem Weaver, a staunch advocate for the Science of Reading (SoR). Weaver has many connections with education agendas financed by powerful entities.
The article accuses the creators and promoters of the film of conflating proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Education Performance (NAEP) with grade level, which it argues is misleading. Furthermore, it alleges that the film is setting the stage for businesses to profit by selling phonics-centric reading curricula, despite Mackenzie and Burton having no professional expertise in reading pedagogy.
The article also criticizes Weaver for his affiliations with organizations seeking to privatize education and monetize reading education. Weaver is a Fellow at the Pahara Institute and has held positions at the NewSchools Venture Fund and New Leaders.
Kareem Weaver is a shameless promoter of anything oligarch funded. He is a Fellow at the Pahara Institute which was organized to train new privatization friendly education leaders. His bio there shares that he was a managing partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund and also executive director for the western region of New Leaders that received big financing from Walton, Broad, NewSchool Venture Fund and Gates. Weaver is also a member of the National Council on Teachers Quality.
The article contends that the data supporting high-dose phonics instruction is flawed, arguing that it doesn't necessarily improve reading comprehension or achievement. It cites several education professors who believe phonics plays an important role in teaching children to read but should not dominate reading programs.
Finally, the article points out that even the National Reading Panel report, which the SoR is supposedly based on, recommends that phonics should not be the primary focus in a reading program.
Big money from billionaires is funding an effort to take control of primary education by selling the Science of Reading as a silver bullet. In the early 2000’s, schools were blamed for not fixing failing communities. The “proof” offered was students living in poverty stricken communities did not do well on standardized testing.
It put schools in a no win situation because the only strong correlation in standardized testing is with family income. Obviously, the broken communities were the problem not their schools. This subterfuge led to claims that reforming “failing schools” was the civil rights agenda of our time. Now “The Right to Read” is playing that same phony civil rights card. It is a contemptuous lie used to profit off the backs of the poor and people of color.
There is no reading crisis and the lionization of SoR is a push toward bad pedagogy. It is a sinister ploy that will harm each student and not just those living in poverty. There is currently a concerted effort to legislate SoR use in all primary classrooms which has either passed or is proposed in every state capital.
So what is actually going on?
We see this type of plan working in many areas of the western world. It’s a playbook that works well because people don’t realize what’s happening. People generally trust their government and experts in the field. They see terms like “science of reading” and “evidence based,” and they don’t think much more beyond it.
In education, this move to privatize the public school is part of a wide neo-liberal / neo-colonial effort to privatize all public entities and sell them off to oligarchs and hedge funds. Because the free public school is a vital part of the American way of life, the privateers must undermine public confidence in the school system. Their friends in the corporate media dutifully place native ads in their shows that “highlight” the “problems” of public schools. Most of it comes from skewed data within studies that are paid for by these moneyed interests. They are corporate raiders. They seek to devalue and destroy the free public school so that they can provide an alternative - a corporate run “public charter school” like we have here in Los Angeles or private schools funded with public money (the voucher movement). Here in Los Angeles, the corporations have funded the campaigns of at least three Board members to help them realize their goals of fleecing the public purse.
In housing and property rights, we see this movement in the destruction of the cities. It’s happened already in New York, Louisiana, and is under way here in California. It’s a sick combination of the purposeful and the opportune. In Louisiana, for example, pro-corporation regulators and their friendly building department staffers declined to issue rebuilding permits to individual property owners after Katrina. In the name of safety, homeowners were denied the chance to rebuild. For example, my grandmother’s house was destroyed by Katrina up river in Baton Rouge. The house was insured and my family received a payment sufficient to rebuild. When my father went to the local permit office, he was denied a building permit - safety issues, you see. Sorry, no rebuilding in the neighbourhood will be permitted. A few weeks later, representatives from a local developer stopped by to offer my family cash for the “unusable” property. As it turns out, the Airport Authority long had expansion plans and needed the right crisis to realize them. My family had two options, sit on an empty lot or sell for what was on offer. Working in this sick “public - private partnership,” aka fascism (the merger of the corporation and the state), developers bypass the lengthy eminent domain process, cut costs of acquisition, and largely get what they want quicker.
This same scenario is now being played out in costal New York (Jay-Z’s shoreline development) and in West Oakland, CA. The difference there, however, is that residents are being sold the lie of rising tides and climate change. Crime is being used in the south side of Chicago and San Francisco to force long time residents out - this after the public schools were gutted more than a decade ago. Corporate-sponsored District Attorneys refuse to prosecute crimes in the name of social justice, and the developers reap the eventual profits as they gentrify old, iconic neighbourhoods after driving long-time residents out.
So, what’s this have to do with autism?
As I have been saying for some time now, these charters and private schools don’t have to take students with IEPs. They can, and do, find creative ways to exclude such students. The goal of gentrification is to take “distressed” neighbourhoods and “beautify” them, often jacking prices of rents and purchases well beyond the means of the disabled. Thus, it makes sense to track these efforts, call them out for what they are, and oppose them in every way possible.
It’s quite often that well meaning people get behind the slogans like “the right to read” without realizing that they’re being roped into a cause that either doesn’t align with their values or actually and actively works against them. Where I can, I will continue to point these out.