A new report on reading in Wisconsin shows many schools across the state continue to use reading lessons shown to leave students behind.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is out with a new report called Trust the Science? The Use of Outdated Reading Curricula in Wisconsin Schools. It looks at how whole-language reading curricula have performed over the years.
“Forward Exam scores show that Wisconsin students are struggling in reading. Currently statewide, only about 36.8% of students scored proficient or higher on the Forward Exam, meaning the majority of students are falling behind. Reading problems cut across all socioeconomic and racial lines,” the report states. “This paper takes advantage of a new dataset available from the Department of Public Instruction that details the curricula used in each district around the state. We correlate reading outcomes on the Forward Exam with some two of the most widely criticized curricula that rely on “Whole Language” techniques – Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell.”
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