Examining the effectiveness of early reading

There’s not always a connection between doing something early and doing it well.

Originally published in the Moultrie News.

When I was in kindergarten, we learned the alphabet and some basic reading principles. Now students are being taught to read in kindergarten. It caused my girls lots of frustration (they hate reading now), and I wonder if there’s any long-term benefit to teaching reading so early.

There’s a critical period in children’s lives when their brains are optimized to learn reading. Studies suggest this can begin even earlier than kindergarten for some kids and later than age 7 for others. For ages, we targeted the middle. First grade is where the actual reading blossomed, while the seeds were sown in kindergarten. The rise of No Child Left Behind and Common Core changed that, pushing reading instruction earlier.

There’s not always a connection between doing something early and doing it well. Kids develop at different rates, and that’s usually not a problem. I’ve never seen an eighth grader who had a hard time walking or talking just because they learned it later than their peers.

It’s a struggle to find studies that show comprehensive reading instruction in kindergarten significantly aids students’ long-term development. One source I read flatly asserted, “No research documents long-term gains.”

On the other hand, there’s a lot of research to suggest that children show better overall development from play-based, hands-on kindergarten programs versus those with a more academic focus. That makes sense to me, and it’s probably truer than ever. With children handed phones and tablets at increasingly younger ages, their at-home play-based experiences are dwindling to nothing.

In the 1920s, experiments by Dr. Arnold Gesell found that most kids could copy a circle by age 3 but couldn’t copy a cross or square until 4.5. For a triangle, it was 5.5, and for a diamond, it was 6. The experiments were repeated around 2010, and the results were identical.

What’s the significance? Kids haven’t changed; school has. Children still need time to learn foundational principles through old-fashioned tactile experience and world-exploring. The rush to reading can rob them of these opportunities. And to what avail? Research suggests that by the end of third grade, early readers are no better than those who learn later.

Trying to instill an ability before kids are developmentally ready may even do harm. In addition to taking away valuable learning time for other critical areas, it can lead to frustration, dislike of reading, and overdiagnosis of disorders like dyslexia and ADHD.

In September, the Federation of American Scientists wrote that kindergarten “needs a revamp” as “hands-on, engaging activities designed for the developmental stages of young children” have given way to “academics, worksheets and learning to read as the pressure to meet certain standards is pushed down on our young children, their families, and teachers.”

The early-reading push is well-intentioned, but the results are uninspiring. Data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study show that American reading scores for fourth graders were below those of 12 other countries, many of which don’t begin formal literacy teaching until closer to age 7.

When Common Core and NCLB promoted earlier acquisition of reading skills, they did so with the promise it would eliminate learning gaps between privileged and underprivileged children. This has proven to be demonstrably false. Worse, attempts to deliver on the promise may have deprived the underprivileged of developmentally appropriate instruction that prepares them for a world much larger than their test scores.

Despite all this, the answer to the reading problem is likely linked to the issue that always haunts education: parents. In this regard, a 1999 study from the University of Northern Iowa is prescient: “Reading in kindergarten is effective if, and only if, the children are ready. This readiness can not be expected to take place only in the schools, but parents must be involved.”

The reality, however, is that parents are not always involved, or their negative involvement impairs child readiness. The children of parents who fail to give their kids basic care and guidance are rarely ever “ready” to learn. Thus the achievement gap in middle school is not the result of a gradual separation between early readers and late readers. It exists on day one of kindergarten and never closes until parents provide the structure and support their children need to succeed.

Read the original column here.