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How teaching reading has (and hasn’t) changed over the past 30 years.

Companies that have been in the game for a while have been courtside in watching EdTech explode over the past 35 years. Even as schools and districts rushed to buy the new, hottest thing, to me the question has always been whether a given piece of tech actually held enough substance to improve student learning.

When it comes to teaching literacy, a huge shift happened in 1999 when the National Reading Panel put out a report saying that if you don’t teach phonics as the foundation of a structured literacy approach, you’re severely crippling the ability of as many as 30 percent of your students who are striving to learn to read. The report found that a foundation in phonemic awareness and phonics was essential.

Not all educators have embraced phonics, and it’s true that the majority of students can learn to read regardless of how they’re taught. It’s also true that as many as 30 percent will struggle and they frequently go undiagnosed through 3^rd grade if they are left to their own devices. Structured literacy instruction does not delay learning but expands the mind and capacity of every student, without the risk of failure for 30 percent.

It has been exciting to see the focus shift to getting educators trained in the methodologies behind the science of reading. Once educators have the know-how, they can give students the skills, the rules and the ability to decode and understand the structure of language. It all begins with phonemic awareness—knowing the sounds of letters and being able to blend sounds together to form words. When students unlock that code, it’s a whole new world. While the pendulum has swung when it comes to methodology, the tech has changed, too. Here are a few ways teaching literacy has transformed over the past 30 years.

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