Science of Reading: The Podcast

S9 E14: Your questions answered, with Claude Goldenberg, Ph.D., and Susan Lambert

• Amplify Education • Season 9 • Episode 14

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In this special episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Claude Goldenberg, Ph.D., professor of education at Stanford University, to answer questions from our listener mailbag. Together they address a wide range of topics facing today’s educators, such as what to do when your school implements conflicting materials, how to support students that are two or three grade levels behind, best practices for teaching multilingual learners, and more!

Show notes: 

Quotes:

“Incrementalism is just not going to serve our purpose unless you want to keep things as they are. And I hate to say this, Susan…some people wouldn't mind leaving things as they are. And we can't do that, and we can't do it incrementally. We've got to really move, like last year.” —Claude Goldenberg

“You’ve got to understand how [two programs] fit together and what the purpose is. Giving teachers materials that are literally incoherent and don't fit with each other is not the answer.” —Claude Goldenberg

“We need to have a system ... using the best knowledge that we have systematically throughout the state, throughout the country, with systems that pick up kids who are at risk and don't let them fail.” —Claude Goldenberg

Episode timestamps*
02:00 The latest from Claude Goldenberg
04:00 Literacy and the urgency of now
7:00 Question 1: What about the pendulum swing?
15:00 Question 2: What to do when your school implements conflicting materials?
21:00 Question 3: Why are running records and leveled texts discouraged?
22:00 Decoding v.s. Word recognition
29:00 Question 4: How do we support kids that are two or three grade levels behind?
30:00 Dyslexia and the importance of universal screening
35:00 Question 5: How would you increase reading proficiency in a school in which nearly every student is a multilingual learner?
45:00 Question 6: How do you apply the science of reading to an ELL student in middle school that doesn’t yet know the language?
48:00 Question 7: Is it best practice for bilingual students who are being taught to decode and encode in English and Spanish to be screened in English and Spanish?
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute


Susan Lambert:

I can't look at Claude when I read this intro, though. So if I'm looking up at my script and not at you, it's because you'll make me laugh.

Claude Goldenberg:

I won't take it personally.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah. Okay. All right. Here we go. This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science of Reading: The Podcast from Amplify. This is the last episode in our Season 9 Reading Reboot, Reexamining and Building on Foundational Literacy Concepts. And we're closing out this season in a very special way. This season, as you probably know, we experimented with our first ever listener mailbag. All season, we've been bringing your wonderful questions directly to our expert guests.

Various guests over Season 9:

"Oh, I love this question. It's so well thought out." "That is such good question." "Great question, Michael. Brought up some great things, so thank you for that."

Susan Lambert:

We've received so many great questions that we couldn't possibly address them all. So to close out this season, we're now devoting an entire episode to tackling as many mailbag questions as we can. But, I didn't want to hog all the fun for myself, so I decided to get some help for this episode from friend of the show, Dr. Claude Goldenberg. Hi, Claude.

Claude Goldenberg:

Susan, how are you? It's so great to see you.

Susan Lambert:

So great to see you too. And you know what? As listeners may remember from your previous appearances on the podcast, you're a professor emeritus in Stanford's Graduate School of Education, but you also recently launched an amazing Substack. So before we get to the mailbag questions, I'd love if you could tell us a little bit about how that Substack came to be and what, Claude Goldenberg, in the world are you hoping to accomplish? <Laugh> That's a long introduction, but I want to hear about your Substack.

Claude Goldenberg:

Well, I appreciate that and I appreciate your asking about it. And your question, what in the world I'm trying to accomplish is a timely one because you know, Susan, I like to keep expectations low <laugh> and modest. So all I'm hoping to accomplish is to end the "reading wars" now.

Susan Lambert:

Now.

Claude Goldenberg:

That's the title of it. I mean, they've been going on longer than you, or even I, if you can believe it, have been on this earth. I mean, they've been going on under one guise or another for really a couple of hundred years. They weren't named "reading wars" until more recently, like 30, 40 years ago. But there has been this debate about how to teach reading. You know, whether it's code and decoding first before they even dreamed up the term "decoding," or if it's meaning first. What's the most important thing, and how do you get a handle on reading, lead with meaning, lead with letters and sounds. I mean, it's been going on for like, ever . And it's just time to stop because it's just not doing anyone any favors, especially the kids. Who are kind of in the crosshairs here.

Susan Lambert:

Can you give us a couple of topics that you've recently written about?

Claude Goldenberg:

Well, last I counted there were like 33 posts. The first one, just to call back to the civil rights movement, because you know this. I mean, most of the kids who are being, let's say poorly served by our poorly organized and carried-out system, or I should say systems, of reading policy, reading education, reading practices—are kids who really depend on the schools to make it happen for them. Now, some of these kids are economically disenfranchised where they have opportunity gaps, communities of color. I mean, those are the biggest victims of our failure to get our reading acts together. But also kids who come from, you know, affluent , middle class homes who for one reason or another have difficulty, have challenges. You know, one of the things we do know is that there's a wide range of instructional needs for kids—individuals, not just kids—to gain literacy. Some need very little...a teaching here, a little answering questions there, rooms full of books, parents who read to them. But even under those circumstances, there are some kids who, for whatever reason, poor short-term memory...You know, all this, because, you know , you're a doctoral student in the premier reading science education program in the world. So I know you've been learning about all the issues that go on in kids' brains and heads that make it difficult to have poor phonological sensitivity. There's a wide range of things that give kids, even from affluent homes, trouble in learning to read. And those kids are being poorly served just as the kids with opportunity gaps because of socioeconomic and social capital issues are being poorly served. So my very first Substack—I'm getting away . I remember your question now. <laugh> My very first Substack was something about the fierce urgency of now, which is a callback to Martin Luther King. You know , incrementalism is just not going to serve our purpose unless you want to keep things as they are. And I hate to say this, Susan, it's going to shock you: Some people wouldn't mind leaving things as they are.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah.

Claude Goldenberg:

And we can't do that. And we can't do it incrementally. We've got to really move, like last year. So that was my first one. And honestly, the one that's gotten the most hits and therefore the one that I'm most proud of.

Susan Lambert:

Well, there you go. Say the title again.

Claude Goldenberg:

"We must end the reading wars...now."

Susan Lambert:

Very good. Very good.

Claude Goldenberg:

Maybe in the show notes, you know, we can put the URL to make it super easy.

Susan Lambert:

Oh , I was just going to suggest that anyway, was we'd put it in the show notes.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. Everything is up for grabs for free. Subscribing is free. And here's the good news, Susan: Unsubscribing is also free.

Susan Lambert:

<Laugh> Alright , Claude. The reason that you're on here—I'm glad you could talk about the Substack, too— but the reason that you're here is we're going to just throw some listener mailbag questions at you and see how you respond. I do have a caveat to that, though. This is not all about me asking the questions and you responding. I might have some things to say, too . Is that okay with you?

Claude Goldenberg:

It's fine with me, Susan. Tee 'em up. I'm ready to go.

Susan Lambert:

Okay, here we go. This first one is from Laurel D. from Pennsylvania. On an earlier episode, we actually addressed part of this question from Laurel D. about bringing colleagues over to a Science of Reading approach. I know you say "Science of Reading" in scare quotes, but hang in there with me, right?

Claude Goldenberg:

I'm with you . I'm with you.

Susan Lambert:

All right . So I want to get your thoughts on a specific part of her question, which has to do with this concept of the pendulum swing. Oh my gosh, I love this. I talk about this too. Laurel asks about trying to convince colleagues who have been "teaching for so long that SOR isn't the pendulum swinging back." What about the pendulum swing?

Claude Goldenberg:

The pendulum. Right. Here's what I think. The pendulum metaphor is an unfortunate fallout from this binary concept that we have that goes back, as I was saying a few minutes ago, it goes back hundreds of years. That people are saying, is learning to read basically a code-driven thing? Or is it a meaning-driven thing? Right? That's your basic binary. That in one way or another has been around for way too long. And the fact is, you can't think about it in a binary way, because lots of things are important to become and develop as a skilled reader. You need the code for darn sure. You need the meaning part for darn sure. But what you also need to know and understand is how they are acquired differently and how they have to meld, join together, to produce productive reading, joyful, all those other good things we want: strategic, fluent readers. And there have been a lot of metaphors that have tried to kind of encapsulate this. You know, there's a Simple View of Reading, which begins with two big buckets, word recognition and language comprehension. But proficient reading is the product of those two. You don't add them; it's the product. So it's a mathematical thing. Then you have a much more compelling visual metaphor by the very well known and appropriately famous Scarborough's Reading Rope. Which you have word recognition beginning with one strand of things, and language comprehension beginning with another strand of things. But eventually they merge; they combine; they're woven together to produce one thing, which is reading. But what we have to remember is that that one thing called "reading" is a fusion. I mean, I don't know how many words and adjectives and descriptors to throw out there. It's a fusion, an integration, a holistic combination—but they originate in different places in the brain. And so it's very important to understand that these things are learned in different parts of the brain, but they need to get fused, they need to come together. You know, the neuroscientists—of which I am not one, full disclosure—the neuroscientists talk about a reading circuit. Or a literacy circuit. That connects the sounds of the language to their written representation, to the language system. We have an oral language system that develops long before reading is even an issue. And all those sounds that we hear that come in through our ears and that our phonological processor kind of interprets and helps us understand. And then we tie those to the words that are coming in. That's the meaning. So there's the phonological part, and then the language part, the cognitive and linguistic. But then when you learn to read, you got to connect that to the orthographic part, the spelling system, the visual part. And the most important thing I ever read that Stanislas Dehaene wrote was that, "Learning to read requires accessing the oral language system visually." Think about that. Accessing the oral language system visually. So the external stimuli that came in and continue coming in through your ears, now have to come in through your eyes from the auditory system, has to come in through the visual system and clang around there in your brain and connect. And I've seen some of the wonderful slides you've shown in your presentations, Susan, of the brain scans showing the parts of the brain where the visual system comes in—somewhere in the back of the brain, in the...

Susan Lambert:

The visual word form area, yeah?

Claude Goldenberg:

That's the one! It comes in back in the back of the brain and connects with the sounds of the language, the phonological part, and connects with the language system, the semantic system. So all of these things have to happen. And so it's not an either-or, you know, and it's not even add 'em all together. It's an integration of those things, but they start in different places, but have got to be merged. They've got to come together. So put that pendulum in the dustbin of history. It's the worst thing that we have that just perpetuates this needless binary thinking.

Susan Lambert:

If you're using science to drive what's happening, or you're using evidence, if you want to call it that, to drive what happens in your district and in your school and in your classroom, there's no place in science for going back and forth and back and forth. Right? You need to move out of that pendulum swing and sort of move forward. Now, sometimes we move forward faster, and then we slow down for a while and slow down for a while, right? But this idea that getting out of the swing of back and forth, because that tends to be what I'd say is fads, right? It's the fad. "Oh! All of a sudden now we're back to meaning—that's the new fad in education." Or, "All of a sudden now we're back to phonics. It's the new fad." It shouldn't have anything to do with fads. It should have to do with science.

Claude Goldenberg:

I would think so. You know, and even though, as you appropriately noted...Science of Reading gives me the willies, not because I have anything against science, for sure, but because the way the term has been co-opted, right? It's become this lightning rod, you know? And people use it as a sledgehammer to challenge things they don't like, or as a sword to beat up people who don't know the science. So that's the problem. But research. I mean, we really need to pay attention to that. I mean, I'm a big believer in direct experience and its importance in learning. And teachers with a lot of experience teaching kids, I don't discount that experience at all. But if you only rely on your own experience, you can have a very insular view of the world.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah, for sure.

Claude Goldenberg:

You know, and common sense. I'm a big fan of common sense, too. But common sense only goes so far. You know, the next time someone invokes to you, "common sense," say, "Okay, let's use common sense. Look outside and tell me if the world is flat or round. Just use your common sense. And just use your common sense. Does the sun go around the earth or does the earth go around the sun? Just use your common sense." So there are limits to common sense.

Susan Lambert:

Yep . Yep . That's a really good point. All right . We're going to go to the next one. We could stay on that one forever, but we're going to move on.

Claude Goldenberg:

We could, but I just hope, Lauren, if she's listening, feels that we've done justice to her question. I don't want her to feel that we sort of brushed it off by saying that's the wrong question. You know, a lot of times when people don't want to answer certain questions, they'll say, "That's the wrong question." I'm not trying to do that. Because I think it's an important question 'cause it keeps coming up. But it has to do with how we think about these things. Right? So, Lauren, if you're listening and not satisfied with my answer, email me and I will continue with this as long as you want.

Susan Lambert:

And it's actually Laurel, Laurel.

Claude Goldenberg:

Laurel. See, I'm checking my code. <Laugh>

Susan Lambert:

Check your code. Laurel, we're so, we're thankful for the question. We're sorry that Claude got your name wrong.

Claude Goldenberg:

We're thankful for the code that Claude just needs to pay attention to. I apologize.

Susan Lambert:

Alright . How about from Amy in Ohio? So here we go, Ohio. And the meta question here is, "There's evidence-based practices I know I'm supposed to be employing, and people are starting to move there. We're also doing this old stuff. How can this stuff fit together?" My answer is always, "It doesn't." But what advice would you have for Amy in terms of advocating?

Claude Goldenberg:

Well, and Susan, I want you to feel free to, you know, join in here.

Susan Lambert:

I will.

Claude Goldenberg:

So, I think the basic problem here is, it's kind of a round peg, square hole kind of thing. When they're required to level students using a theory or approach or a set of assumptions that say you level according to how well students are coordinating these different cues or these different sources of information, that's a fundamental error. Now, when I say fundamental, I want to say "according to our current knowledge." Because I want to be clear that when I'm talking about when I say, "We know," I would say the preponderance of the evidence...supports that. But I mean, that's kind of a nerdy, clunky thing to say, but that's what I mean. The evidence so far suggests that the best way to teach kids to read—specifically word recognition, which is an important part of learning to read—is by first focusing on the letters and sounds. And having them try to decode the word first and then once they decoded something to sort of connect it with meaning. So say, "Is that a word I know, and does it make sense here?"

Susan Lambert:

So what you're saying is what we know about teaching those things is, we know that the alphabetic principle is essentially "settled science," and I'm putting it in air quotes, but we have enough research on that to know that it's effective, that it's not even worth—in air quotes—"researching more" because there's other things we need to learn about how kids learn how to read. And we also know that the three-cueing system is ineffective. So it's not just like: We have this thing [which] is effective and we're not sure about this other thing. We have this thing [which] is effective, meaning the alphabetic principle; this thing is ineffective, that approach [of the] three-cueing system. And there are states that have actually outlawed the three-cueing system.

Claude Goldenberg:

Let me just make two points. Maybe like a little friendly amendment to what you said.

Susan Lambert:

I love that.

Claude Goldenberg:

And the reason I sort of shy away from the "settled science" thing. And that is that, how should I say this? I mean, there's very good evidence that learning the code is important. You got to be learning oral language at the same time, you know? We can talk about that also, but it kind of goes into that things have to converge. But, part of the subtle science, if you insist on using that, Susan, part of the subtle science is that the benefits of decoding phonics instruction are modest. If you just look at that as a sort of singular, which, you know, no one that I know is advocating as a singular approach.

Susan Lambert:

Totally agree .

Claude Goldenberg:

But if you look at it as a singular approach, the effects are fairly modest. And just to put it in somewhat quantitative terms, there've been a bunch of an analyses done, studies, meta analyses of phonics versus something else. And consistently what's found, with some exceptions—I mean, this is part of science, variability is part of science—but by and large, very robustly, very consistently, using phonics instruction gives kids and teachers an advantage, a leg up . Not in every single case. There are meta analyses and studies that show that if you compare two groups of kids, one getting systematic phonics, one not getting systematic phonics, some kids who are not getting systematic phonics end up doing better than some kids who are getting phonics instruction. Now, that's not the typical thing, but it's a non-trivial minority. So there is variability there. So what I'm thinking, soon it may be in Amy's school and in maybe other schools, what policymakers, administrators, the board of education, the whoever makes these decisions saying, "Well, I'm putting the best face on it. Well, you know, there's some evidence that some work for these kids and some work for those kids. So let's have the best of both worlds. Let's just give it, you know, our best, most generous assumption." Maybe that's the thinking behind it, and I can understand that. But the downside of that is it creates this incoherence that we've been talking about that really just undermines the whole reading enterprise. And much better is to have a program that acknowledges the importance of letter-sound knowledge as the first pass at word recognition. And then connecting with meaning and with language to create that circuit. You want a coherent program, rather than putting teachers in a situation that Amy and her colleagues are in, like, "We're doing this here, and that there." That is part of the incoherence that I'm talking about. And exactly why this pendulum and the binary, we have got to kill that. Sorry, I don't mean to get militant here, but that's exactly the problem you run into when people say, "Well, it's some of each." You got to understand how they fit together and what the purpose is. And putting together, giving teachers materials that are literally incoherent and don't fit with each other is not the answer.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah. Well, not only is that bad for teachers, but it's bad for kids. Right?

Claude Goldenberg:

Well, heck yeah .

Susan Lambert:

Can you imagine having two different...how confusing.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah.

Susan Lambert:

Oh, Amy, I hope we answered your question. It's an unfortunate situation that I think many teachers are in. I don't know. The next question extends a little on this. This is from Heather A. in Illinois. She just flat out asked , "Why are running records in leveled texts discouraged in the Science of Reading?" Is there another lens you can take on this to sort of answer this in a different way?

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of related to what I was talking about in the last one. Because it comes down to what you mean by running record; what you're looking for; what you're trying to get a handle on as you're doing your running record and what you mean by leveled, right? If you mean by running record that you're seeing how kids are approaching word recognition? Are they using the letter-sound cues? And then connecting with meaning to see if the letter sounds are giving you the right cues to read the word. See, this is why the binary is so harmful, because people conflate decoding and word recognition. They're not the same thing.

Susan Lambert:

Oh, I'm glad that you brought that up. Tell us more.

Claude Goldenberg:

Oh, I'm now very encouraged, because I wasn't sure you were going to go with that...Okay, good. So decoding is using your phonic skills, your knowledge of letter-sound associations and spelling patterns. Because in English, spelling patterns are pretty complicated. You don't have a , as everyone knows, you don't have a Spanish, for example, you know, letter-sound combinations and decoding is pretty transparent. But let's say English. Because that's what we're talking about. So decoding is your letter-sound knowledge to make a first pass at decoding the word. It's your first pass at recognizing the word. So you say a word, you see something written. Like, I was watching one teacher having a child read, and they came to the word soccer. S-O-C-C-E-R, right? And so the child read, "so...ker." I think it was because she had previously read something incorrectly, and the teacher corrected it with a long O . So there was a little bit of, in the moment, negative transfer.

Susan Lambert:

Leftover.

Claude Goldenberg:

Leftover, right. That's the word. That's the technical term, "leftover." <Laugh> So this kid reads "so...ker." And she pauses, and the teacher says, "Wait a minute. Is it , is that making sense? Look, what could it be?" And then she points with a pencil to the ball coming afterwards. "See, 'ball.'" "Oh, soccer!" Right? So you use your decoding skills, your letter-sound knowledge, to make a first pass at it. And then you—"Is this a word I know? Does it make sense here?" Now the teacher was scaffolding, externalizing, teaching the mental process that you w ant t o teach kids to engage in. First, use your letter-sound knowledge. Do not ask first, "Well, what word would make sense here?" That is the wrong first question to ask when you come across a word that you don't read immediately. R ight? A sight word or an instant word. Your advisor Jane likes instant w ord. So I want to shout out to Jane.

Susan Lambert:

I know. "Instant." It's great.

Claude Goldenberg:

Absolutely. So if it's not an instant word, you want to use your letter-sound knowledge first and then kick in the meaning...That's the kind of thing you want kids—that kind of protocol, if you want to call it that, that mental habit, if you don't mind my being a little behavioristic—that's exactly what you want. So you want to have a running record and leveling text according to that understanding of how kids should acquire reading skills, the reading habit. You don't want to acquire the habit of first asking, "What would make sense here?" Now, later on, to be clear, when kids become individuals, become more proficient readers, there is some prediction going on, and there is context and "Think of what would come next," that goes on. But that happens way later when there's more fluency and automaticity involved in word recognition. Right now you're thinking of, you want to get these kind of habits. I don't know , maybe some of your readers or listeners are not going to like my behaviorist term "habit," but it is a mental habit you want to inculcate. You don't want to inculcate the habit of thinking, "What would go first here? What would go next? What does the first letter? And skip it if I don't get it." That is the wrong thing. That's kinda like training a learning disability.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah, yeah.

Claude Goldenberg:

So running records in level text—there's nothing wrong with them inherently, except the way they're typically interpreted. And that is with the three-cueing lens, with the three-cueing theory underlying them. If you're using the appropriate understanding of how word recognition should be taught and what are the relationships among the different elements of the sound, symbol, and meaning, then you can use running records and you can let— sometimes beginning-level text, you know what they're coded—appropriately leveled? Decodables.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah. I like you made that distinction, right? Because we don't want people leaving here thinking that , "Oh, the traditional running records and leveled texts are really the—Claude Goldenberg said it's okay to teach them." What you're saying is, pay attention to how well kids are decoding words. And, when they're not decoding a certain, maybe they're tripped up by a certain sound-spelling pattern; they can't apply that sound spelling pattern—get them into a decodable that helps support the automaticity of that particular sound-spelling pattern. Is that a good distinction?

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. Support and practice. That's right . I mean, the basic thing is you can use running records in leveled text, but in your running records look for the right things and level according to the relevant things.

Susan Lambert:

Mm . Yeah. I like that.

Claude Goldenberg:

I mean, it's the criteria that's the problem. They're tied up with three-cueing and balanced literacy in a way that's really dysfunctional for a lot. Now some kids, you know, Susan, you know as well as I do , and sort of your listeners, that some kids will learn to read...

Susan Lambert:

Yeah, that was my brother.

Claude Goldenberg:

Under all sorts of circumstances, and it doesn't really matter. But by and large, you don't want to teach with that sort of three-cueing system and balanced literacy in mind because it's just dysfunctional.

Susan Lambert:

Yep . Because the kids that don't pick it up on their own, right? Like I always heard, "Yeah, your brother was reading before he went to kindergarten." Blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . Okay. I needed explicit instruction. The explicit instruction I got was in "Dick and Jane." Right? That's the wrong way to get explicit instruction. If you don't pick it up on your own, which lots of kids don't—they need explicit instruction in the code. And for our listeners that haven't listened to the Jane Ashby episode, not to overemphasize, it's a great episode about phonology being sort of that gateway in.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. But again, also keep in mind this is subtle science that some kids don't need very much.

Susan Lambert:

That's right.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yep . And , and you can actually, I believe, I don't have any data to support this, but I believe it's true that you can actually derail a kid who doesn't need a lot of instruction and would kind of get it with just minimal. You, I believe you can derail them by teaching, training, scaffolding them in the wrong way. To say, "When you come across a word, what would make sense here?" I mean, I would love to do a study. Actually, I wouldn't, because I wouldn't want to mess up any kids, but I believe we have some indirect evidence that you can actually derail good progress if you teach them to do the wrong things.

Susan Lambert:

Oh , yeah. That's a really good point. Very good. Well, Heather A. from Illinois, I hope we answered your question. Thanks for sending it in. Let's go to Megan E. From Massachusetts who asked about addressing the needs of kids that are two or three grade levels behind. And really, that might even mean supporting kids in upper middle and high school. And this is one that's so hard to answer because I think a lot of times part of the problem, particularly in middle and high school, is that we don't carve out the time to make that happen. Right? We just assume that they get pushed into other classes and whatever, you know, middle and high school, don't pay attention to it. But what's your advice there?

Claude Goldenberg:

Well, I mean, the first thing is you want to try to avoid that from happening.

Susan Lambert:

Prevention, right?

Claude Goldenberg:

Prevention. You know, that old cliche ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. I think that's the first order of business. You know, you need universal screening that screens for the right things. One of the problems here is that people don't really understand screening. They think you're identifying dyslexia in kindergarten. I mean, I've read quotes from...superintendents who are saying, "We don't want screening in kindergarten. We don't want to identify kids. It sets them on the wrong path [if] you identify them as having dyslexia in kindergarten." You cannot identify dyslexia in kindergarten. Period. I'll say it that definitively. But you can identify kids who are at some risk for reading difficulties. Either poor short-term memory. I mean, there are a number of criteria here. Poor phonological sensitivity. Some kids are at risk for reading difficulties because they have no literacy in their environment, or very little literacy in their environment. They have not been exposed to that. Those kids, under the right instructional circumstances, will catch up and be able—under the right instructional circumstances—that's a big "if," because a lot of times, as we were saying, it's not there , as I was droning on about a while ago. These are the kids who don't get the instruction they need. But you've got to check to see if there are some signs of being at risk for reading difficulties. It may or may not turn into dyslexia. There are lots of reading difficulties aside from dyslexia. But there are some markers for that. And we have some measures that fairly easily, particularly if teachers know what they're looking for—you don't need to have a formal screening tool, although that's helpful. But if you know what to look for, you can get a sense of where kids are on some of these precursor skills. Anyway, I went on too long about that. But that's the important thing. You need to, you need to have this in an MTSS system, right? So if your kid is at risk for difficulties, then there's something to do with them. But once you're at , and to get back to Megan's point, what if you have a classroom...you're a fourth grade teacher, a fifth grade teacher. And you've got kids who are two or three grade levels behind, because there was no screening, there was no MTSS. It's a tough lift. I mean, there's no sugarcoating it. But the thing is, those kids have got to learn the same thing that kids who don't know how to read have got to learn. The challenge, Susan, as you sort of anticipated, is they're older. They've been through this rodeo before, you know, being taught in some way, fashion or form, and it hasn't worked. And, you know, kids get older, they have opinions about whether there's something worth doing. So motivation kicks in.

Susan Lambert:

Yeah.

Claude Goldenberg:

And it becomes much more challenging to get them to read and sit through lessons that might seem kind of babyish. That's where the art of teaching really comes in, and being able to motivate kids. But you need to have the science also. You need to know what needs to be in place to help these kids catch up and accelerate to the extent possible. But it'll take more teaching chops when kids are older and there's a greater and greater span— self-concept issues, embarrassment, all those things...so you want to catch it before it becomes really much more difficult to remediate. But the same things have got to happen. There are really no workarounds. You know, don't have them memorize bushelfuls of words just as whole entities. That's not going to help them. If anything, it'll just bog them down.

Susan Lambert:

We don't allocate time in most middle and high schools to make sure that we can do this kind of intervention that needs to happen. So this idea of prevention—yes, that's a great thing. But what happens to this kid that came to my school in fifth grade and never had any of this evidence-based instruction? What do I do about that? You've got to find time to teach the kid the code. And older kids sometimes can pick that code up faster, right? Like, they can make some connections faster, but, to your point, they're already embarrassed. So they shut down a little bit. But yeah, you've got to teach the kids the code and you've got to find the time and you've got to find the way to do it.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. Some schools have reading specialists; people who can provide support. Some schools don't. And it's a tough lift. I remember when I first started teaching, I was given eighth grade students who were not just two or three years behind. My top readers were maybe three years behind. I had kids who were pre-primers to first to second, to third to fourth. I mean, this is a problem with our system. I mean, here I was, a first-year rookie teacher, totally wet behind the ears with nothing but good intentions and correct political thinking about teaching these kids. And I didn't have the skill . I had no idea what to do. And a lot of times that's what happens. I mean, these kids get put in these situations. And I don't know if I taught anyone anything.

Susan Lambert:

That's kind of harsh on yourself. I'm pretty sure you probably did.

Claude Goldenberg:

I might have taught them to hate reading even more than they did before. I don't know. It was not very productive. I mean, I tried. I worked. I mean, I stayed up 'til, you know, three in the morning. But we have to, we need to have a system, really, that takes seriously using the best knowledge that we have, systematically throughout the state, throughout the country, with systems that pick up kids who are at risk and don't let them fail. I mean, easy said, easy said.

Susan Lambert:

We have three questions that are right in your wheelhouse, because they're talking about...

Claude Goldenberg:

Now I'm worried.

:

English language learners. Oh, no, no, no, no. <laugh> I just know that you're going to get a little excited about this. And the first one comes from your state of California, Cheryl D. And she writes, "My school is located in Salinas, California. We are known as the salad bowl of the nation, because we are the produce cap... ." Oh!

Claude Goldenberg:

You were going to say "produce," weren't you?

Susan Lambert:

Yeah, I was.

Claude Goldenberg:

The context allowed you and you self-corrected.

Susan Lambert:

I did!

Claude Goldenberg:

And Susan, you self-corrected.

Susan Lambert:

Oh , I know.

Claude Goldenberg:

You didn't need me pointing a pencil to the next word.

Susan Lambert:

Nope. Totally happened. Let me try again. "We're known as the salad bowl of the nation because we are the produce capital of the country." (I'm coming there for my veggies.) "Our school population is approximately 97% Hispanic. Nearly every student is an English learner and approximately 30% of our students are proficient readers. Many educators in our district feel the Science of Reading is an incomplete response to our population. What would you do to increase reading proficiency in the school?" What would Claude Goldenberg do? Dr. Claude.

Claude Goldenberg:

Claude, please. Claude. First thing I would do is banish the phrase Science of Reading. Just do not talk about it.

Susan Lambert:

And you said that on Science of Reading: The Podcast.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. Yeah. Because it just creates confusion. And what you want to think about is what reading research exists that could help us here. Because I don't need to tell Cheryl D. or anyone else that if only 30% of your kids are proficient readers, that's not a good situation. So do we have knowledge? And I don't mean just experimental studies, but, you know, people have experience. I respect teachers' experience. They have something to say. So do not discount that. But we have some research, some reading research that would really help. One, we just ended up talking about: screening, being on the lookout for potential reading difficulties. That's an important part of it. But I think the most important part is this: That whether you're learning to read in a language you already know, which is most kids, or you're learning to read in a language you are simultaneously learning. Which is why they're called English learners. And you can call them multilingual learners if you want to. You can call them emergent; you can use whatever labels you want. But the operationally relevant fact is that they're learning to read and write as they're learning to speak and understand the language. Okay? Now, English learners and English speakers need to learn exactly the same things in order to learn to read and write in English. They need to connect the sounds of the language to the written representation—the orthography , the spelling, the letters—and then connect that connection to the meaning system, to the semantics of the language. They both need to do exactly the same thing. But what's the difference? The difference is that English speakers already know the sounds of the language. It's the level of a six or seven-year-old. They've been speaking the language or listening to language for six, seven years. They know the meaning system, the semantics. They know the meanings of the words to the level of a six, seven-year-old—obviously, absent developmental anomalies. But by and large kids who are learning to read at five, six, seven years old, they know the language; they understand the language. All they have to learn—and I say "all" in quotation marks—is to spell the orthographic system. That's what reading is. You know the language. You don't have to teach them the language. They learn more words. I mean, learning language...never ends. But they know the words and the sounds of the words required to learn to read at the level they're at. So we talked about the reading circuit, right? Think about, I'm going to put another metaphor up in your ears and think about the three a three-legged stool.

Susan Lambert:

Hmm . Okay.

Claude Goldenberg:

The three-legged stool of reading. Sound—phonology. Symbol—orthography. Meaning—semantics. Right? Those are the things that need to get connected in your brain in order to read. Right? If you're an English speaker, you've already got two of those legs. You know the sounds; you know the meanings. You just need a third one. The orthography . If you're an English learner, you don't have any of those legs. You certainly don't know the orthography . But you also don't know the sounds of the language. Those are new. You don't know the meaning system, the meaning of the words. Those are new. That's why they're called English learners. So you not only have to create the reading circuit or create the three-legged stool. You've got to create, and your teachers have got to help you create, all three legs of the three-legged stool. It's a tougher lift to learn to read in a language you're simultaneously learning to speak and understand. But you have to do the same thing. The same thing has to happen. And one of the problems we have when people sort of say, "Oh, the Science of Reading. It doesn't work for English learners." That's why I said get rid of the Science of Reading. Because you've got the wrong idea in your head if you say that. We know from reading research that kids have got to learn the same thing. But for English learners, if they're learning to read in English, and I'm going to talk about if they're learning to read in Spanish in a second. But if they're learning to read in English; they need to learn the same things. But the teacher has got to make sure, the school's got to make sure, as they're learning to read in English, they're also learning the oral language sometimes called English Language Development, aka: ELD.

Susan Lambert:

Yep. Yep .

Claude Goldenberg:

So anyone who says, "I was reading some comment from one of the reports that recently came out, [a] teacher was complaining that we have so much emphasis on phonics that we don't have time for ELD ." I said , "Well, who put that program into place? Because they obviously haven't read the research." Because the research very clearly shows—a study by Elena Ary, by Sharon Vaughn—clearly show that if you're learning to read in the language, you're simultaneously learning to speak and understand, and [if] you're having trouble, understandably with that language, you've got to bring in the oral language part to support the literacy learning part .

Susan Lambert:

Preach. Preach.

Claude Goldenberg:

Ah, I'm going. And then before I shut down the pulpit to give you a chance to get a word in, which I know you're just dying to do, if you're learning to read in your first language, Spanish, you need to do the same thing. Now you have the advantage that you have two of those legs. The phonology and the semantics. You just need to learn the orthography, which, fortunately for our Spanish speakers—because I learned to read in Spanish, that was the first thing I learned to read in— it's much simpler. And this is documented; this is not just my experience. There is research. There's actually research—I know you get excited when I talk about actual research—that proves, I note , I hate the word "proves" too, because I'm kind of finicky—but it demonstrates, quite conclusively, that learning to read and write in a transparent language, and not just Spanish—I don't want to do a shout out just to my fellow gente [Spanish for"people"]—but Finnish, Greek, all these transparent languages are learned roughly in half the time that it takes to learn a complex orthography like English . But the same thing has to happen; the same reading circuit has got to be created. You need certain kind of instruction to create this reading circuit, to create these connections between sound-symbol and meaning. No matter which language you're reading. That is a universal truth. Well supported by the studies. They may be countermanded in 10 years, I don't know. We'll see what happens. But at the moment, that's the way things go down. And we're not using that best knowledge, whether you're teaching bilingual education, English immersion education, anything. That kind of knowledge is just not being used, understood, and in fact, there are a lot of people who are working directly against it. They're saying, "This doesn't work for our kids. Science of Reading doesn't work for our kids." That's why I said, first eject the Science of Reading. And then take a look at, okay, what studies do we have that would give us a toehold here?

Susan Lambert:

Yep . Yep . And to clarify, eject the Science of Reading—[you mean] the term "Science of Reading," not the whole concept of Science of Reading.

Claude Goldenberg:

Not the concept, that's right. Not the concept, not science, not research, not systematic knowledge to build our understanding of how things run.

Susan Lambert:

But going back to Cheryl D. Her particular situation. And what you were describing about how those kids need to acquire English. You know, simultaneously learning a language they're trying to read and write in. They also have some Spanish assets that they can actually leverage because the Venn diagram overlaps. So there are some things in Spanish that overlap with some things in English. So, I don't know, do we call that thing "metalinguistic transfer" or something like that? I'm not sure.

Claude Goldenberg:

We could , yeah. Metalinguistic understanding. Yeah.

Susan Lambert:

But recognizing we can leverage some of the things that they do know. So it's not entirely something new, at least for the overlap between Spanish and English.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. There are some things that literally transfer. Simple things like letter sounds, particularly the consonants, not all of them, but most of the consonants—they transfer. The vowels are what screw you up . Because in Spanish, one to one , five vowels, five sounds, that's it . No mas. [Spanish for "No more."] Whereas in English, five vowels. I don't know, 20 sounds, 23 sounds. But here's the thing, Susan. If a student doesn't know how to read in either language, that kind of transfer doesn't really help.

Susan Lambert:

Correct.

Claude Goldenberg:

So to transfer, you need to be familiar with the things you're transferring from and then apply it to what you're transferring it to. Which brings up the issue that if a kid...is literate in his or her home language—that's a huge advantage in learning to read in a second language. Let's call it English. So that's the first thing you want to know. Particularly that fifth grader that you mentioned who comes to your school not knowing how to read in English. Well, if he has been in school and learned to read, at least to some degree in his first language, there's lots to transfer from. And to.

Susan Lambert:

Hold that thought because I think we're going right into a question that Sherry F. From New Jersey raised, which is, "How do you incorporate the Science of Reading?" Don't be mad at her for saying that term.

Claude Goldenberg:

It's okay. We're friends, Sherry.

Susan Lambert:

To an ELL student in the middle grades that doesn't yet know the language. That applies to what you're just saying, right?

Claude Goldenberg:

Yes, yes. However, the first question is, does this student know how to read in his or her language? Right ? That's the first thing you want to know. And if you say, "Oh, this kid came to me. He's 13, doesn't know a word of English, doesn't know how to read. Oh my God, what I'm going to do with him?" My answer would be, the first thing you want to do with him is find out if he knows to read in his home language. Because if he does, it's one thing. If he doesn't, it's another thing. So you talk about building on assets. I mean, literacy in your home language is like one of the best assets you can have. You really need to understand how languages both transfer, and there's also instances of negative transfer. I think there's more positive than negative transfer, but there's also negative transfer. What, in one language, can actually interfere with what you you're trying to learn. So it's a little more complex than just saying, "Just tap into what they know in their home language." So if they know how to read in their home language, they have the alphabetic principle. They know sound-symbol associations. They know what decoding is about. I mean, they know this stuff. They probably know other things too. But you want to tap into that. You want to know what their level of understanding is and then build on that and say, "Look, we're going to...what you know in Hungarian or Spanish or Greek or Polish ... what you know, we're going to use to help you learn how to do the same thing in English." That's the agenda.

Susan Lambert:

Mm-hmm.

Claude Goldenberg:

Now, if they don't know, that's a tougher lift. Because you've got to teach them and plus, these kids who know how to read, they already have the reading circuit in their brain. Because they've got those connections made. It's just in Polish or Greek or Hungarian or Spanish. But that can then be redeployed, repurposed, shall we say, to do the same thing in English. If they don't know how to read and they're in middle school and they don't know how to read in any language, it's a tougher proposition. Because you've got to get back to those sounds and symbols. And the question becomes, should I do it in their first language first? And then have them transfer to English? Or should I do it in English? So that becomes a more complex sort of question.

Susan Lambert:

You know what this makes me think of? This makes me think of our friend Elsa [Cárdenas-Hagan], who wrote the book. What is the name of that book? Something for English Language Learners.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yes, I have it right here. Oh, Elsa, sorry. Oh, I hope you're not listening.

Susan Lambert:

It's called "Literacy Foundations for English Learners: A Comprehensive Guide to Evidence-Based Instruction. "It has the orange cover on it.

Claude Goldenberg:

That's the one. Yeah. I found something else in an orange cover. No, that's right. I mean, get that. Run. Just get it right now.

Susan Lambert:

It's an amazing resource. So, we are going back to another question, and I think it lends itself really well into, hold on, I lost the...

Claude Goldenberg:

Question. I have it. You you want me to read it? 'Cause I have it.

Susan Lambert:

Can you read it? Yeah. What's that question? I've lost it.

Claude Goldenberg:

That's ok. I'm here to help. Catherine T. from New Jersey asked, "Is it best practice for bilingual students who are being taught to decode and encode..." (That's good. Encode is important too.) "to decode and encode in both English and Spanish to be screened in both English and Spanish? We wouldn't necessarily use the English language data to determine who needs intervention, but instead get a baseline, inform instruction, and monitor progress. I have found research supporting this, but curious to hear your thoughts." Is that the one you were thinking of?

Susan Lambert:

Yes. Screening in both languages, right? Should we be screening in both languages ?

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah.

Susan Lambert:

What do you think?

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah, I think ideally, yes. A lot depends on the student's context. So for example, if you had kids in a bilingual program—the best part for bilingual students and you don't... .See, that's part of [it], the terminology becomes a little bit fuzzy.

Susan Lambert:

Tricky. Yep .

Claude Goldenberg:

Yep . A bilingual student could be any of the the ones that we've been talking about. A bilingual student could be a fifth grader that arrives and can't read in any language. Could be the same fifth grader who arrives and can speak and can read in Spanish. Right? Now, in the first case, a kid who arrives and doesn't read in any language, then you want to get a handle on phonological awareness. But you want to do it in a language that's familiar to them. Because it's much more difficult. Think about what phonological phonemic awareness even is. It's parsing the individual sounds that are in a word. And if the sounds are not familiar to you, it's harder to say what, where a sound ends and where it begins, because they're just all noises. Whereas if there are words that you're familiar with, you may still have trouble phonemically segmenting, which could be a problem of phonemic sensitivity, phonological sensitivity. But you want to use words that are familiar to them. So you can rule out the fact that, well, it's a strange sound. I mean, how do you expect them to segment anything when it's like "meh-me-meh"? I mean, it could be whatever. So in that case, you definitely want to assess for phonemic segmentation and ideally do it in Spanish. Now if you're talking about a young kid, a kindergartner, who's just beginning on the road to reading, shall we say , and they're learning to read, it depends on your model. I mean, sometimes they're simultaneous models , where kids are learning to read in both languages and you want to see, well, are they having, well, and you want to screen. We don't know if they're having trouble because they're beginning. Then you want to screen in both languages because they're going to be taught to read in both languages, and you want to see if there's difficulty in the language that's familiar to them.

Susan Lambert:

Mm- hmm.

Claude Goldenberg:

But also a language that they're going to be learning. I mean, one thing we do know is that phonemic awareness does transfer across languages and phonemic awareness across languages is correlated. Now correlated doesn't mean they're identical. It just means if you rank order both, they come out in roughly the same order. But you could have phonemic awareness in English and phonemic awareness in Spanish correlating, but phonemic awareness in Spanish is much better than phonemic awareness in English. It's just they correlate. But their means, their average is much higher or lower. So if they're going to be taught to read in both languages, I would definitely screen in both languages. So a lot of it depends on the particular context and the situation.

Susan Lambert:

So you're saying it depends on what you mean by bilingual. Depends on where the kid is in their learning journey for whatever that bilingual means. But there's definitely an advantage to using both English and Spanish as a screener.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah . Yeah, it is. And we say that with English and Spanish because we have those screeners in English and Spanish. A much tougher lift. Thank you, Catherine , for asking an easier, relatively easy—there's no easy version—a relatively easy version of this question. Because if you have kids, you know, who speak Somali, right? Or speak Arabic. I mean, there are some things under development that are going to try to be, you know, pan-linguistic, but a lot of people don't have access to those things.

Susan Lambert:

And I'm going to infer from her question, is the issue of overidentification for kids that need intervention. As opposed to, of course this kid is at risk for learning English because they don't know anything about the language yet. But when you start instructing in the language, then they're going to make progress. So I think that that might be an underlying issue here too, is overidentification.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yes. I think you're exactly right. And honestly, to be fully transparent here, a lot of the objections that a lot of my EL and bilingual education advocate colleagues have to screening—and you know , last year we passed, not me, but a screening bill was passed in California, and there was tremendous opposition. And part of it's tied in with the question that we heard before about people saying the Science of Reading doesn't apply to English learners. I think it was a ...teacher in Salinas, Cheryl D., that...overidentification has been a thing and kids get identified as at risk for reading difficulties or even worse, diagnosed for dyslexia, when in reality, they're just not familiar with the language. And so that is something we need to avoid. But at the same time, Susan, you've probably heard of...a pendulum. We're back to the pendulum. That's where we started .

Susan Lambert:

Full circle again. Here we go!

Claude Goldenberg:

Full circle again. There's now evidence of underidentification. Right? That kids who have historically been overidentified—African American kids , bilingual, English learner kids—have been overidentified. And now we've swung the other way. A student did a great study on this; they found that teachers feel like, "Well, you know, we can't refer anybody for testing because we don't want to overidentify." And even if they do refer them, they have to jump through a whole pile of hoops to get kids even screened or identified or tested or anything. So what you have is this phenomenon of underidentification early on, and then boom, late in the later grades, overidentification, because those problems that we were talking about before were not identified early on.

Susan Lambert:

Right. Right.

Claude Goldenberg:

And so those kids who have problems that could have been caught and remediated and prevented...

Susan Lambert:

Prevention, yes.

Claude Goldenberg:

To a great extent, never were. Well, what happens when they hit third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade? These kids are like really behind—yes, it was Megan from Massachusetts—the students who are two or three grade levels behind. They are "behind-er" and "behind-er." That's a word I just made up. You can, you can have it.

Susan Lambert:

Thank you.

Claude Goldenberg:

So, okay, what do we do with this kid? Well, you know, let's give it to the student study team and let's see what they can figure out. And the student study team can't figure anything out. So, well, let's call in the psychologist, but wait, we need parents...then you get into the whole IEP thing, and so there's underidentification and you swing forward to overidentification.

Susan Lambert:

Wow. Well, what I love about this is we ended up at the exact same place as what we started at.

Claude Goldenberg:

Susan, does that mean we've made no progress?

Susan Lambert:

I don't know. I'm wondering about those that asked questions. Are [they] like, "Wow, did they really answer my question? Or did they just circle around it the whole time? I'm not sure." But we hope we were helpful to those people that were willing to share questions in our mailbag. But I'll tell you one thing: It's always fun getting on a call with you and talking through some of these issues. And I hope our listeners enjoyed it, too.

Claude Goldenberg:

Yeah. Thanks, Susan . It was a pleasure. And maybe it's just not our bag .

Susan Lambert:

I...Oh, man. < Sigh > But maybe Substack is. So, hey, listeners, go to Claude's Substack. Subscribe to it and respond to him. He likes to hear your comments.

Claude Goldenberg:

I do.

Susan Lambert:

Thanks so much for joining us, Claude . We really appreciate it.

Claude Goldenberg:

It was totally my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Susan Lambert:

And listeners, before we go, I'm thrilled to share that we want to keep hearing from you with your questions. We'll be collecting questions going forward at amplify.com/sormailbag. We'll also have a link in the show notes, and if you want to seriously make my day, please submit your question as a voice memo. It'll be so much better to actually hear from you. Also, some great questions came in on topics that we've covered on recent episodes. So if you want to know more about the Science of Reading and Maria Montessori, or serving students with dyslexia, then check out the show notes for links to some recent episodes on those topics. Next time on Science of Reading: The Podcast, we're returning to an important topic: higher education. We'll speak with Dr. Karen Betz about her work at Marian University and about how current practitioners can support positive change in higher education.

Karen Betz:

When I was a classroom teacher, I wasn't thinking about the university anymore. But I think what needs to happen is a partnership.

Susan Lambert:

That's coming up in two weeks. Science of Reading: The Podcast is brought to you by Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert. Thank you so much for listening.