17 episodes
Sold a Story APM Reports
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- Society & Culture
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4.9 • 5.8K Ratings
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Millions of kids can't read well. Scientists have known for decades how children learn to read but many schools are ignoring the research. They buy teacher training and books that are rooted in a disproven idea. Emily Hanford investigates four authors and a publishing company that have made millions selling this idea.
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1: The Problem
Corinne Adams watches her son's lessons during Zoom school and discovers a dismaying truth: He can't read. Little Charlie isn't the only one. Sixty-five percent of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient readers. Kids need to learn specific skills to become good readers, and in many schools, those skills are not being taught.
Read: Emily Hanford’s reading listRead: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org
Dive deeper into Sold a Story with a multi-part email series from host Emily Hanford. We’ll also keep you up to date on new episodes. Sign up at soldastory.org/extracredit. -
2: The Idea
Sixty years ago, Marie Clay developed a way to teach reading she said would help kids who were falling behind. They’d catch up and never need help again. Today, her program remains popular and her theory about how people read is at the root of a lot of reading instruction in schools. But Marie Clay was wrong.
Read: Emily Hanford’s reading listRead: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org
Dive deeper into Sold a Story with a multi-part email series from host Emily Hanford. We’ll also keep you up to date on new episodes. Sign up at soldastory.org/extracredit. -
3: The Battle
President George W. Bush made improving reading instruction a priority. He got Congress to provide money to schools that used reading programs supported by scientific research. But backers of Marie Clay’s cueing idea saw Bush’s Reading First initiative as a threat.
Read: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org
Dive deeper into Sold a Story with a multi-part email series from host Emily Hanford. We’ll also keep you up to date on new episodes. Sign up at soldastory.org/extracredit. -
4: The Superstar
Teachers sing songs about Teachers College Columbia professor Lucy Calkins. She’s one of the most influential people in American elementary education today. Her admirers call her books bibles. Why didn't she know that scientific research contradicted reading strategies she promoted?
Read: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org
Dive deeper into Sold a Story with a multi-part email series from host Emily Hanford. We’ll also keep you up to date on new episodes. Sign up at soldastory.org/extracredit. -
5: The Company
Teachers call books published by Heinemann their "bibles." The company's products are in schools all over the country. Some of the products used to teach reading are rooted in a debunked idea about how children learn to read. But they've made the company and some of its authors millions.
Map: Heinemann’s national reachRead: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org
Dive deeper into Sold a Story with a multi-part email series from host Emily Hanford. We’ll also keep you up to date on new episodes. Sign up at soldastory.org/extracredit. -
6: The Reckoning
Lucy Calkins says she has learned from the science of reading. She's revised her materials. Fountas and Pinnell have not revised theirs. Their publisher, Heinemann, is still selling some products to teach reading that contain debunked practices. Parents, teachers and lawmakers want answers.
Map: How states approach reading instructionOrganize: Sold a Story discussion guide Read: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org
Dive deeper into Sold a Story with a multi-part email series from host Emily Hanford. We’ll also keep you up to date on new episodes. Sign up at soldastory.org/extracredit.
Customer Reviews
Profiting from failing to teach our children to read
Eye opening, devastating, and a must listen to podcast. It was difficult to listen to at times because it was hard to believe how easily our education system was duped into buying into (literally) mere theories of how to teach reading that were absolutely wrong. Many children will never recover from this injustice and malpractice.
I applaud Emily Hanford and her team for bringing this forward. Please listen and share with a teacher you know.
Validating and enraging
My daughter is 13 and I knew when she was going into kindergarten first and second grade there was an issue with reading and the curriculum. it’s not reading, it’s math too. The idea that kids have to extract meaning from what they read doesn’t just stop with reading an ELA. It continues into math problems that we present to our kids with all these tests. I read an article in edweek.com that talked about how math is not it’s also about making meaning of the numbers. I ask constantly on my social media that’s full of educators about math problems my 13 year-old gets in the seventh grade. The other day I asked “is this a math problem or is this the reading comprehension problem with numbers in it?” I was being sarcastic, but I still had educators come on and explained to me what the problem was that I was looking at, and how I should solve it. They missed my point entirely, that this is not a math problem. this is a reading problem with math in it, that “told a story” and “had meaning.” it wasn’t arithmetic at all. Very few ways that they do math are actually arithmetic. It’s all part of the same problem, this is why our kids can’t do math. That’s a whole other can of worms that you should totally dive into.
Just wondering…
Just wondering why episode 2 is explicit I got confused when I had to skip it I’m 9 and i love this it is great i am binge listening to the non explicit eps also pleaseee do a second season maybe on math