Can “Sold a Story” Change How America Teaches?
By a considerable margin, Emily Hanford is our most consequential education journalist. This is not idle praise. Few reporters covering any field can claim to have changed professional practice and state policy as measurably as Hanford’s work on reading instruction has. Beginning with her landmark 2018 report Hard Words and culminating in the first season of her investigative podcast Sold a Story in 2022, Hanford has done more than merely expose the weaknesses of instructional practices like balanced literacy and three-cueing and the people who promoted and profited from them. She’s done as much to make the “science of reading” a national issue as all but a handful of researchers, policymakers, and advocates.
Recall that for decades, we have sought to improve reading scores with standards, testing, accountability, and incentives. All of these policies demanded that schools and teachers produce better results. But for the most part, teachers are not incompetent, indifferent, or negligent. Many have been trained badly, taught the wrong things, or given poor guidance and curriculum materials. Hanford called attention to the ways that teacher preparation went against the grain of what we know, or at least should have known, about teaching reading effectively. Teachers were not sinners, but sinned against—misled, and, well, sold a story. This re-framing has made Hanford something of a hero among teachers.
Season 2 of Sold a Story, which debuts today, seems likely to put that hero status to the test. It is no less powerful, meticulously reported, or convincing than Season 1. But its central message is challenging and less comforting, and it will be hard for teachers to embrace: an entire set of ideas and values many teachers admire and believe makes them good at their jobs might actually make them less effective.
The seven-part series (I’ve previewed the first four episodes) makes an unlikely hero of the late Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann and Direct Instruction (DI), the highly structured approach to teaching that he pioneered. The name is somewhat misleading. It conjures an image of teachers standing in front of the classroom, just telling children what they need to know. Rather, DI consists of carefully sequenced lessons, scripted teacher language, precise explanations, and educators who anticipate students’ misunderstanding and how to respond to them. Nor is DI casually constructed. Engelmann and his colleagues wrote, tested, and refined the program in front of children, revising it when faced with evidence of students struggling or misunderstanding concepts or material. Hanford quotes a former Engelmann colleague who described DI’s central premise: “If the kid hasn’t learned it, the teacher hasn’t taught it. That was our basic rule.”
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Teacher Content Knowledge Test Results: Early Literacy Foundations of Reading.
Notes and links on the taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI and Jill Underly.
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked.
Madison’s district, despite an elite university pipeline, hypereducated leadership, and a shiny, new strategic plan, suffers the same frailties as Milwaukee’s: basement performance, backbreaking spending. But while Milwaukee is pulling out of its tailspin due to courageouschoices from the top, Madison is ponderously ambling to nowhere. Just ask the locals. “You need the marketing, and you need the product,” as a parent told a reporter. “I’m missing the product.”
2025-2026 Madison 4k-3rd grade Early Literacy Screener report: The bar moves faster than the kids.
Joe Gothard, Becky Kundert and Sonia Spencer Remarks on Madison’s K-12 Literacy Crisis.
2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax increase. Total spending will be at least $706,000,000 for 25,003 students, or $28,236 per student.
May 2026 Madison School District Presentation: 7,095 adults for 25,003 students (3.52 students per adult!)
2024-2025 Early Literacy Screener Map.
Map: Foundations of Reading Results: 2015–2024
Where have all the students gone?
3,887 Madison 4 year old to third grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group.
Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average k-12 tax & $pending. This despite our long term, disastrous reading results. May, 2026: 7,095 Staff for 25,003 students; $pending > $26k per student!
Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability
The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
China’s PhD Glut Drives Top Graduates to High School Teaching Jobs
