OPINION: House Bill 33 leads students and educators in the wrong direction
Alyssa Gray is a freshman studying political science and an opinion writer.
Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.
Ohio House Bill 33 went into effect on July 4, 2023. Its primary sponsor was Rep. Jay Edwards of District 94, which includes Athens County. The contents included many budget provisions. However, hidden within this over 6,000-page bill were drastic changes to the way Ohio teachers are allowed to teach reading to students. Some of these changes may do more harm than good to young Ohio students. Instead of the widely used balanced reading approach, lawmakers have decided to push towards using a curriculum that aligns with the science of reading.
The new change required districts to replace the current curriculum with one that is based on research from the “science of reading”. The science of reading is a collection of research on how children best learn to read. The science of reading is The science of reading has been a topic of hot debate between educators for years. The debate has even been labeled the “reading wars.”. Though many think the term has a specific curriculum approach, it has been used for decades for various arguments. Recently, the term has been highly politicized and used mostly by politicians rather than educators themselves.
The bill also introduced required testing for all kindergarten students to screen for dyslexia. All students would start at Tier-1 which includes a test given to all students in kindergarten. If they are determined at-risk for dyslexia based on their Tier-1 testing results, they would be in Tier-2. Students in Tier-2 would be screened every one to two weeks for progress monitoring. Though progress monitoring is important, testing weekly can take valuable class time away. Students at risk need special intervention and the constant progress monitoring could take away an entire session of intervention support from a specialist. Students who showed no improvement from the progress monitoring would take a Tier-2 test. The results of the Tier-2 testing can help determine if the student shows signs of dyslexia.
Through this new bill, one of the most popular strategies to teach reading, the three-cueing approach, is banned in Ohio schools. This method incorporates meaning, structure and visual cues to learn reading. When students come across an unknown word or say a nonsense word, they are encouraged to ask themselves, “Does the word make sense?” or “Does the word sound right?” and “Does the word look right?”
Meaning encourages students to draw from past experiences and knowledge and look at pictures to determine what would make sense in the context of the sentence. The structure encourages students to gain knowledge of language and grammatical patterns. The last part of the three-cueing method, the visual portion, asks students to use letter and sound knowledge (phonics) and sight words to determine the word.
Reading Recovery is across the state to provide intervention to first graders struggling with reading. It is a program out of Ohio State University aimed to help the lowest-achieving first graders by giving them one-on-one help weekly with a trained specialist, based partially on the three-cueing method. The nonprofit challenged the new bill earlier this year, stating that it is unconstitutional. It argued that the ban on the three-cueing method was included in a budget bill instead of its own piece of legislation. A trial to determine whether the science of reading will be implemented across the state is set for later this year.
By using the science of reading as a new basis for teaching children to read, students are limited on the type of books they are allowed to read. With this “no guessing” approach, many believe students should only be allowed to read books that are completely decodable. Decodable books are books that can be read with phonics skills already learned. Frequently these books are not engaging at all and include words that are decodable, but young students misunderstand. For example, the University of Florida Literacy Institute Foundations (UFLI Foundations) is an approved curriculum under this new bil and can be used as a supplemental curriculum. One of the decodable readings under this curriculum is a story about two boys who “craft a crest.” For students in early elementary, it can be confusing to understand that craft can be used both as a noun and a verb. Also, children this age typically have no idea what a crest is. Frequently, these texts do not contain meaningful words that students will use in their writing.
Though these approved texts may be completely decodable, precious time in class is used to explain these tricky topics. These decodable texts usually are not engaging or interesting either. Many advocates for the science of reading believe students should not read books that are not completely decodable until they master phonics. Mastering phonics is not an easy process and this would mean students would not be able to read classic books like “Magic Tree House” by Mary Pope Osborn, or books about topics that interest them, like history or science, until they can prove they can master phonics. This puts kids who struggle with reading and learning phonics even farther behind their peers and even students who don’t struggle as much would not have the opportunity to read these types of books until around second grade, when most have mastered phonics. Students cannot fall in love with reading without the opportunity to read books that interest them and foster their imaginations.
Photo by: Alyssa Gray
Here is another example of a decodable text approved under the new legislation. It was created by Angelia Grimes-Graeme under Extra Special Teaching. This text would be used as supplemental to other phonics practice. Students don’t know what trams are nor is it a valuable piece of information to learn. Even for a native English speaker, these readings turn into tongue twisters. These texts do not provide a story either, they are only sentences strung together with the same topic. This is not interesting to young readers.
Recently, the approved curriculum list was published so that district leaders could determine what needs to be purchased for the 2024-25 school year. This new list contains a lot of curriculum that was included under Reading First. Reading First was a program during President George W. Bush’s administration’s No Child Left Behind Act. Though using the curriculum approved under Reading First helped students in some aspects, research showed that Reading First did not produce a statistically significant impact on reading comprehension tests compared with students not using the program.
The phonic-based approach that the science of reading curriculum calls for does not allow for a balanced approach that supports all students. Yes, some students need extra support in phonics, however, some students may need more support with other aspects of reading. The curriculum approved under this legislation may do more to help kids with dyslexia who need controlled decodable texts. However, not all students struggling with reading need this type of instruction. Instead of an approach based on what kids with dyslexia need, there needs to be a balanced approach that will benefit all readers. Ohio legislators need to give more power back to teachers in their classrooms. With this new change, teachers can no longer decide what is best for their students and determine the best approach for each student individually.