“From Cueing to Confusion: The Flaw We’re Still Ignoring”
It’s been over a year since I last wandered the digital corridors of Substack. Life, as it tends to do, pulled me in a thousand directions—teaching, writing, advocating, challenging. But yesterday, on October 10th, 2025, a familiar ping lit up my inbox. A newsletter. Simple. Unassuming. From a writer I’d followed loosely in the past. The subject line was just provocative enough to override my usual inbox triage. I clicked.
On September 26, 2023, I read the following article by Marion Blank
Two Thirds of American Kids Can’t Read Fluently. LINK
Here are some extracts and my comments:
Phonics may be a popular way to teach reading, but it fails too many children.
This is another disinformation spread by the Balanced Literacy proponents that has its roots in Whole Language (WL) instruction that emerged in the 1970s.
The level of arrogance attached to ignorance is unbearable because it is rooted in smug satisfaction with being isolated from the facts of the case.
On 16.1.2022, I read a post on Dr. Sam Bommarito’s blog. Here are a few extracts and my comments.
Dr. Sam:
On the one hand, everyone agrees that the current state of reading instruction is not acceptable. SOR advocates claim Balanced Literacy is the root cause of the problems in reading. They view Balanced Literacy as lacking instruction in phonics and the use of orthographic information.
“Here we have a serious problem because at no period in the U.S. has anyone pronounced reading achievement to be satisfactory…Yet, most of us view education as a 100% attainable venture—all students can and should learn to read by X age. This is a valuable ideal, but it certainly isn’t a reasonable measure for any sort of accountability (see the disaster that was No Child Left Behind).”
