In this Reading League Journal article, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University and Health Sciences High and Middle College) say the recent science of reading movement is in danger of being implemented in ways that produce “a cascade of errors, from policy decisions to curriculum design to ineffective classroom practices.” They quote George Bernard Shaw – Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance – and describe four factors they believe are undermining effective, evidence-based reading instruction:
• Over-emphasis on decoding – While phonological awareness and phonics are essential to early reading instruction, there’s the risk of neglecting “equally essential components, such as language comprehension, background knowledge, and verbal reasoning,” say Fisher and Frey. “Narrowing instruction to phonics and decoding at the expense of comprehension risks producing technically proficient word callers who struggle to construct meaning.” Once students have cracked the code, there are diminishing returns from phonics.
For older students who haven’t yet mastered decoding, those skills need to be backfilled, but it’s also essential that kids get instruction in “academic language, syntax, and discourse-level comprehension,” say Fisher and Frey. “We are deeply concerned about the misconception that the science of reading is confined to a narrow range of foundational skills… Rather, it should be understood as a comprehensive framework for fostering deep transferable reading abilities that are responsive to the diverse needs of learners.”
• Seeing knowledge-building as a replacement for reading instruction – Background knowledge is an essential component of skilled reading, say Fisher and Frey, helping students “make inferences, resolve ambiguities, and construct coherent mental models of texts.” But knowledge needs to be used in tandem with reading skills: decoding, making complex texts coherent, and understanding the words and phrases that make texts cohesive. Some students pick up these skills incidentally, but many others – including those who come to school with disadvantages – need explicit instruction.
• Marginalizing fluency and sight words – “While decoding and phonemic awareness have rightfully received substantial attention in recent reading reforms,” say Fisher and Frey, “fluency is sometimes treated as a secondary concern, or mistakenly conflated with mere reading speed.” But fluency – reading that is accurate, automatic, and expressive – “is a crucial bridge between decoding and comprehension,” they say, “and, for older students, is associated with college readiness. When students read fluently, they are more likely to allocate cognitive resources to meaning making rather than word recognition.”
Just getting students to read aloud to one another – a common classroom practice – is not enough. The teacher needs to be there to guide, correct errors, and diagnose, say Fisher and Frey. For older students, they recommend a 10-minute-a-day, 5-day routine with one passage, with the teacher modeling fluent reading, students marking up the text, practicing chorally, and then being assessed individually.
As for sight words, it’s a misconception that recognizing words by sight negates phonics instruction, say Fisher and Frey. Unknown words become sight words “not through visual memorization but through repeated decoding that bonds the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning in memory. In other words, sight word recognition is the result of successful phonics instruction and repeated exposure.” If students are plodding along with limited sight words and poor fluency, they “will remain in a state of cognitive overload that hinders comprehension.”
There’s also an equity dimension: “Neglecting fluency instruction, including the development of a robust sight word vocabulary, disproportionately affects struggling readers,” say Fisher and Frey. “Instruction must therefore include structured, research-based fluency practices, including repeated readings and modeled oral reading, while embracing the importance of sight word acquisition as a natural and necessary outcome of skilled decoding.”
• Overlooking motivation and engagement – These two “are central to how learners interact with texts and persist in the face of difficulty,” say Fisher and Frey. “When students are motivated, they read more frequently, which in turn leads to greater exposure to vocabulary and syntactic structures that are crucial to comprehension development.” Students’ sense of agency is an essential ingredient, and it develops when teachers honor student voice and decision-making, foster authentic reading experiences, include choice, and respect the cultural and linguistic backgrounds that students bring to the classroom.
The quality of curriculum materials plays a big part, add Fisher and Frey: “Programs that narrowly script instruction or constrain teacher decision-making risk alienating both educators and learners. The marginalization of motivation within reading science discourse is not a neutral omission; it is a threat to the comprehensive development of reading competence.”
Many consultants and curriculum publishers label everything they do as “science of reading,” say Fisher and Frey. Front-line educators need to be critical consumers, “familiar with the research and willing to pose questions. Further, as a field, we must engage in public scholarship that corrects misconceptions. Only by honoring the full complexity of reading at the cognitive, linguistic, social, and motivational levels can the science of reading fulfill its promise for all learners.”
“Is the Science of Reading Under Threat?” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey in The Reading League Journal, September/October 2025 (Vol. 6, #3, pp. 57-63); the authors can be reached at dfisher@sdsu.edu and nfrey@sdsu.edu.
Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1107 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.
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