It took Ronda Fritz more than a decade and a doctorate degree in education to learn how to teach kids to read.
Before she became a professor at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande training a new generation of teachers, 在她开始一项改变俄勒冈州东部pg电子游戏试玩阅读教学的运动之前, 弗里茨在她的家乡北粉是一名阅读专家, near the Oregon-Idaho border. Her undergraduate and graduate classes in reading at both Boise State University and Eastern Oregon University were not working. 她的学生没有进步，她在幼儿园的儿子也很挣扎.
“I’m a teacher — I’m supposed to be a reading teacher — and I have no idea how to help him or the children that are coming to me every day,” she said. “我已经准备好结束教育了. 我想:很明显，我不擅长这个.”
It’s a feeling Fritz hears from many of the teachers in eastern Oregon schools who she retrains in reading instruction.
弗里茨教授教育工作者如何教授阅读. 她这样做是基于几十年的认知和神经科学研究，这些研究解释了大脑是如何学习解码和理解书面语言的. 这需要将声音与字母和字母组合联系起来, 更广泛地称为语音教学. Her students learn how to build lessons from that knowledge to help kids read more confidently, 并开始写作和理解更复杂的单词和句子.
她的学生学会了教每个人, 从一个有阅读障碍的学生到一个阅读能力远高于年级水平的二年级学生. 这并不是今天俄勒冈州所有新入职教师的培训方式. It’s not even how most would have been trained at Eastern Oregon University five years ago.
“如果你想在这一切结束后在俄勒冈州教书, you have to meet this skill set.”
– Gov. Tina Kotek
这所大学和美国许多培训教师的大学一样.S., 面临来自校友越来越大的压力, parents, 在过去的几年里，政治家和学区都在努力确保毕业的教师在阅读教学方法上知识渊博，这些方法被证明是适用于所有孩子的.
Morgan Whitney, a teacher for Portland Public Schools and a 2013 graduate of Portland State University’s graduate teacher program, said the type of instruction she and her peers got in reading at the university depended entirely on which professor they were assigned. She ended up paying thousands of dollars for specialized training after earning her degree, and eventually a second master’s degree in the science of reading at a different out-of-state institution. 她还在偿还贷款来支持这一切.
“I’m not angry. 我真的希望他们开始做得更好，”她谈到波特兰州立大学时说. The university has conferred more education degrees than any other public institution in the state during the last 15 years.
The nearly 10,000 elementary school teachers in Oregon learned different methods for teaching reading depending on where they went to college.
Today, Oregon’s 550,000 students have been left to contend with these instructional differences. About 40% of fourth graders and one third of eighth graders scored “below basic” on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 通常被称为“国家的成绩单”.这意味着他们很难阅读和理解简单的单词.
In May, Gov. 蒂娜·科特克发布了一项行政命令 creating a commission 他们将在明年调查和评估该州教育工作者准备计划的阅读教学，以及它是否与数十年来关于如何最好地教授阅读的研究相一致. 我们的目标是更新教师资格认证流程，这样所有在俄勒冈州获得资格认证的新教师都能证明他们知道如何最好地教所有孩子阅读.
“如果你想在这一切结束后在俄勒冈州教书, you have to meet this skill set,Kotek告诉《pg电子游戏试玩》.
在过去的七年里，任何准备在俄勒冈州教幼儿园到五年级的人都接受过一些自然拼读教学方面的培训, according to compliance reports 大学在2016年和2017年向教师标准与实践委员会提交的报告. But most elementary teachers-in-training take only one or two courses on reading instruction, 他们更多地沉浸在理论中，而不是语言学和书面语言规则, according to those reports and to interviews with graduates and professors who spoke with the Capital Chronicle.
Some even learned flawed methods as part of an approach to teaching reading called “balanced literacy.一些方法包括教学生猜不认识的单词, to memorize words and use pictures rather than spending time decoding them and sounding them out. Some even learned that overemphasizing phonics skills would turn kids away from a love of reading.
While some Oregon professors have led the nation in reading research during the last 60 years, individual professors at the state’s 15 education colleges and universities decide which theories and methods they believe are most effective, and not all of those methods have been rooted in the decades of reading research and science.
“教授可以自由地教授他们想教的任何东西,” said Edward Kame’enui, 他是尤金俄勒冈大学的退休名誉教授和特殊教育研究员，帮助建立了该大学的教学和学习中心. “对我来说，这真的是一个关乎公众信任的严重问题. The university ought to be relying on science to promote the content for which students are paying tuition. 需要有人起诉教育学院，包括我自己的学院.”
Kame’enui’s former colleague Doug Carmine他也是该校的名誉教授.
“在系统层面上，最大的问题是教育学院，”卡迈恩说.
在该州的许多pg电子游戏试玩，教师队伍正在发生变化. 但也有人在有缺陷的方法上加倍下注. According to a recent analysis of reading instruction at public teacher colleges by the National Council on Teacher Quality, nearly all in Oregon are failing.
Quality control
教师标准及实务委员会, Oregon’s teacher licensing agency, is in charge of ensuring graduates of Oregon’s teacher prep programs are prepared to teach reading in a classroom.
So in 2015 and 2017, 当时州立法机关通过了法律，要求俄勒冈州的教育工作者准备计划确保所有孩子在三年级结束时都能阅读，并培训教师筛查阅读障碍和其他阅读困难, 该委员会负责确保教育计划的执行. All of them submitted lists and descriptions of literacy courses and textbooks to the commission, and all of the schools passed. Anthony Rosilez, 牌照委员会主任, said in the end the state’s mandate that universities teach “evidence-based” reading instructional strategies was too vague.
“The challenge (is) what’s been considered ‘evidence-based reading instructional strategies’ has varied through time and evolved through time,” Rosilez said.
Oregon’s education agencies do not track where licensed teachers graduated or where graduates of the state’s universities end up teaching. 高等教育协调委员会一直在追踪有多少人从该州公立大学的教育项目中毕业, 但并不是所有人都能成为有执照的教师. During the last two decades, about one-third of all teacher credentials conferred by a public university in the state were from Portland State University. Officials from the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission estimate that at least half of Oregon’s teachers graduated from in-state schools, but they do not have data.
委员会颁发的执照考试, 所有未来的教师都必须这样做, 最终设定了他们必须知道的标准.
Until September of 2021, 在俄勒冈州，获得阅读专家认证的考试包括对教师进行“平衡的读写方法”和一种叫做“线索”的方法的测试，这种方法包括让学生猜测单词和使用图片. It essentially ensured that teachers were taught flawed reading instructional methods in college so they could pass the exam. 自2021年9月以来，教师们所采用的新版本不再测试他们的线索, 甚至没有提到平衡的读写能力.
Failing grades
Most Oregon teacher preparation programs have received failing grades for reading instruction from the Washington, D.C.美国全国教师素质委员会, 自2013年以来，它一直在召集专家小组审查项目.
The colleges get a grade based on whether they are teaching five foundational reading skills, including phonics, 按照科学的方法. They also get reviewed on how many hours teachers are required to spend learning reading methods, on how their knowledge is tested and assessed and the kinds of opportunities they get to practice what they’ve learned in the classroom.
“Most teacher prep programs aren’t giving teachers the tools they need to help kids learn to read,” said Heather Peske, president of the council.
Today, it released its latest grades. Undergraduate and graduate programs at five of the state’s six public universities were evaluated, and nearly all got an “F.“没有一所私立大学参与了最近的评估, and Western Oregon University in Monmouth denied the council’s public records requests for information about its teacher degree programs. Leaders at Western, the University of Oregon, Portland State University and others have criticized the council’s methodology for not being comprehensive enough.
“当俄勒冈州只有28%的四年级学生精通阅读时，你所做的一切似乎都没有帮助到该州的学生,” Peske said, 参考俄勒冈州在国家教育进步评估中的最新分数. 当你只有13%的西班牙裔学生精通阅读时, she said, 这对我来说表明我们需要让我们的老师做好更好的准备.”
但东俄勒冈大学(Eastern Oregon University)在过去三年中对其阅读教学进行了改革，使之与阅读科学相一致，这所大学的排名突飞猛进.
‘Noticeable differences’
In 2016, Fritz, the Eastern Oregon professor, graduated from the University of Oregon with a Ph.D. in special education. She studied under academics who had previously been architects of some of the largest state and national reading initiatives.
At the time, 她还在东俄勒冈大学指导实习教师, and teaching one literacy class to students preparing to teach kids who were learning English as a second language. But in 2019, 教育学院的新院长上任了, 他让弗里茨设计一门关于特殊教育和读写的新课程. 她开始效仿华盛顿特区的一家阅读诊所，开办了一家阅读诊所.C., where teachers in training could practice reading interventions and instruction on individual students. She started tutoring her colleague Amanda Villagómez’s daughter as she developed the model.
Villagómez负责东方大学的本科阅读教学, and even in this role, 正在努力帮助她的一年级学生学习阅读吗. 这反映了弗里茨多年前和儿子的经历.
Villagómez had earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees at Eastern and a doctorate from Boise State University. 她说，老师教过她教自然拼读法，但不是教那些最吃力的学生. She’d also been taught other strategies, like getting kids to guess at words or use pictures. Villagómez说，当她在安大略省当任课教师时，她参加了阅读证书考试，测试了她对策略的了解，她现在知道这是有缺陷的.
当她看到女儿和弗里茨在一起的收获时，她感到很惊讶.
“很快就有了明显的不同，”Villagómez说. “我想说的是，我的女儿一直很喜欢读书和谈论书, but it was just the sense of her being able to read with confidence and to read on her own.”
When Villagómez moved into a new role leading the master’s in education program at Eastern, 她请弗里茨接替她的角色，指导未来教师的阅读指导. 弗里茨开始把她学过的所有阅读技巧结合起来.
在西俄勒冈州，变革也在进行中. Marie LeJeune, 谁负责pg电子游戏试玩的本科教师培训项目, 她说，2017年的立法要求大学培训教师筛查阅读障碍和阅读困难，这促使她和一些新教师将更多符合阅读科学的方法纳入教学.
Karren Timmermans, who runs literacy instruction in the teacher degree programs at Pacific University in Eugene, 2017年立法后，她也认真审视了自己的阅读方法课程.
蒂默曼斯说，她仍然依赖线索, on “that guessing game, 猜单词和看图片.” She signed herself up for 100 hours of Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling, or LETRS training, 由阅读专家路易莎·莫茨提出. The training is steeped in the science of reading and in phonics instruction and the fundamentals of written language. She also immersed herself in research about how special education teachers approach reading.
“很多研究都来自特殊教育. 普通教育项目并不总是很快接受他们.”
——Sylvia Linan-Thompson，俄勒冈大学特殊教育副教授
特殊教育专家发现，如果以符合科学的方式教授，90%以上的不同学习能力的学生都能学会阅读. 她最终获得了俄勒冈州教育部的批准，成为该州两所提供阅读障碍集中和证书课程的大学之一，另外两所是东俄勒冈大学.
在阿什兰的南俄勒冈大学, 今年早些时候，扫盲和特殊教育专家萨沙·博伦斯坦被聘请为英语和教育专业的学生教授一门阅读科学选修课. Borenstein, 她在缅因州海边的家中远程授课, 14年前，当她从洛杉矶搬到阿什兰时，她最初提议开设这门课程.
“I went to the university and I went to the special education department and I said: ‘This is what I do. Can I be of any help?’ And nobody took me up.”
The school is not making it a required course for all students in the teacher education program, 但正在考虑创建一门阅读背书的科学, a sort of additional credential that acknowledges expertise and that can be added to a teacher’s license.
Divide on instruction
Sylvia Linan-Thompson, 俄勒冈大学的一位特殊教育副教授说，在许多大学里，普通教育教授和特殊教育教授之间存在着历史上的分歧.
“很多研究都来自特殊教育，”她谈到阅读科学时说. “通识教育项目并不总是很快接受他们.”
尽管越来越多的研究支持稳健和强化的自然拼读教学, 研究显示了记忆等方法, using pictures and guessing at words based on context can actually have long lasting negative effects on reading ability, 俄勒冈州许多大学的管理人员仍对变革持谨慎态度.
Audrey Lucero, an associate professor of language and literacy education in the school’s general educator program, 她以平衡的方式教导准备成为K-5教师的学生. 这包括语音教学和学习那些基本的阅读技巧, 还有那些猜测策略, 比如用图片来识别单词.
“他们将接触的大多数孩子都是典型的发育中孩子,” she said of her college students. “当然，其中一些孩子会有学习障碍. 希望他们接受了特殊教育.”
卢塞罗认为，明确地教授自然拼读法很重要, 但是过于关注它会让孩子们失去阅读的兴趣，或者占用宝贵的时间，而这些时间本可以用来学习理解文章的思想和意义.
“这种情况在历史上一次又一次地发生，在最需要的pg电子游戏试玩里，孩子们接受的是死记硬背的教育，从来没有达到批判性地阅读课文的地步, which is, after all, what literacy is about,” Lucero said. “基于研究，我不相信这一点, based on my experience, 基于我20年的课堂教学经验, 我们只需要更多的解码练习.”
她与Leigh VonDerahe分享了这一观点, 刘易斯大学阅读干预项目的项目主管 & Clark College in Portland.
“We’re sticking firm with the balanced literacy approach to teaching reading,” VonDerahe said. 她担心，阅读科学是在推动纯语音教学.
“这意味着:我们可能有能够阅读的学生，但他们阅读吗? 他们会成为你的终身读者吗?”
刘易斯大学教育硕士项目主席金伯利·坎贝尔说 & Clark, 这是因为我们把太多的注意力放在了语音和解码技能上, 教师牺牲了教学理解能力.
她说:“这完全是关于字母的发音，这令人不安和担忧。. “So, when we look at research, we look across a broad range of research that considers all of the components of reading that are part of balanced literacy.”
但坎贝尔的阅读教学方法让艾丽西亚·罗伯茨·弗兰克感到困扰, who worked with Campbell in 2013. 罗伯茨·弗兰克是刘易斯的导演 & Clark’s special education program. She said she and Campbell had conflicting ideas of what “evidence-based” reading instruction meant, and she had little support within the college for trying to move instruction away from flawed methods and strategies.
“I can’t tell you how many former students of theirs came to me saying: ‘I didn’t learn how to teach these kids to read.“这非常令人沮丧，”罗伯茨弗兰克说. Three years into the job, her contract was not renewed, and today, she’s a dyslexia specialist and regional administrator for special programs covering five school districts in southwest Washington.
她创建了一个在线阅读科学训练项目, and retrains teachers across the state in the methods she wasn’t able to instill at Lewis & Clark. During the pandemic, 她创建了一个在线课程，吸引了超过2名学生,000 teachers across the U.S. and Canada.
Taking responsibility
这些大学在阅读教学方面的领先变革表示，在过去20年里，全美学生的阅读能力低下，阅读成绩缺乏提高，这些大学应承担部分或大部分责任.
Kame’enui, 谁帮助建立了俄勒冈大学的教与学中心, 他说，大学应该承担最大的责任.
“当人们认为他们可以自由选择教任何东西时, 对我来说，这违反了公众对公立大学的信任,” he said.
Timmermans, at Pacific, 她说，她认为这是大学之间的共同责任, 学区和课程出版商.
“I think public schools have a responsibility to ensure that the teachers have access to the sort of curriculum that is well-researched and scientifically based; teacher education programs have a responsibility to stay current in the field and ensure our teachers are well prepared; and the textbook publishing companies need to ensure that the scientifically supported methodology is being published so that teachers have access to those resources, 即使他们离开了教师教育项目,” she said.
Whitney, 波特兰州立大学毕业生和波特兰公立pg电子游戏试玩教师, 他说，为教师提供健全的教育是学院的责任, 全面训练阅读教学，才有自己的教室. 今天，俄勒冈州越来越多的选区, including Portland Public Schools, are paying for teacher retraining in reading to teach teachers the skills they didn’t get taught in college.
“我坚信这不应该是pg电子游戏试玩系统的工作，”她说.
In eastern Oregon, Fritz continues to bring what teachers should have learned in college to the elementary school classrooms where they work. Across the state, 俄勒冈州的公立大学没有就任何大规模的改变进行合作, cross pollinating ideas and experts to improve coursework and instruction in teacher degree programs, according to Fritz. 它们都竞争州政府和联邦政府的资金，并且都由不同的委员会管理.
There aren’t professors or deans at any teacher college in Oregon asking her to speak with students or join discussions with faculty. 但是全州越来越多的学区都在寻求她的帮助. Today, 她访问了俄勒冈州东部的pg电子游戏试玩，提供面对面的培训, 她还为全州的教师提供在线培训. 她帮助他们使用以阅读科学为基础的基于语音的新课程, 教他们如何帮助最困难的学生.
“I feel like I’ve reached a place in my career where I’m doing what I was meant to be doing,” Fritz said.
她告诉这些现在和未来的老师，如果他们在教阅读方面遇到困难, 问题既不是他们，也不是他们的学生, 但是他们使用的方法或者他们被教导的方式需要改进.
她想在他们放弃之前找到他们就像她差点那样.
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