Small: Reading failures must be addressed

Reading failures must be addressed

By Jonathan Small

It’s said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results.” This describes the failures in reading proficiency by Oklahoma students, despite billions of dollars of increased spending on public education in Oklahoma.

Edunomics Lab revealed that from 2013 to 2024 Oklahoma’s per-pupil spending increased 47 percent during that decade, but National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores in both reading and math are far lower today than in 2013. One cannot ignore that reality. Oklahoma’s spending increase far outpaced inflation during that time. Regarding Oklahoma, Edunomics noted, “Reading 4th-grade scores fell through the decade and continue to decline even as spending increased.”

NAEP scores show that only 23 percent of Oklahoma fourth grade students scored at or above proficient in reading, compared to 33 percent in 2015.

Lawmakers have begun to address the problem.

Lawmakers have passed, and the governor has signed, a law to address a major culprit in reading deficiency in Oklahoma and across the country, the failed academic experiment of “three cueing” instruction, which places emphasis on the memorization of pictures and images to determine words. This approach has long been known to be flawed but was taught by Oklahoma public higher education teacher training programs. Effective for the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, it’s finally going be illegal for K-12 public schools to use any other methods of teaching reading than the proven methods of phonetic instruction and the “science of reading,” which has historically proven overwhelmingly successful.

But clearly much more must be done. After Oklahoma demonstrated significant success from 2011-2015 with a law known as the “Reading Sufficiency Act,” which largely prevented “social promotion” of students past the third grade who couldn’t read at a first grade level, special interests at the Oklahoma Capitol prevailed at gutting Oklahoma’s law and ushered back in social promotion.

Policymakers, educators, parents and voters are going to have to take an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to reverse this crisis, and it must become the number one issue regarding public education. Given that from pre-K to third grade the most important aspect of schooling is learning to read, and from third grade on we read to learn, it’s time to do the hard things now to drastically improve the reading proficiency of Oklahoma students.

Jonathan Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.