Doug Noon has 2 great posts – “Scientifically Based Reading Research Wars” and “The Might-Work Clearinghouse” that are way worth the time. Doug has done his research and does a great job of laying out the issues and the research behind the battle over reading instruction.

This has so much to do with education in general because language arts literacy and math literacy are the driving forces behind almost everything that happens in elementary schools. Obviously, reading/language arts and math should be the cornerstones of elementary education – however, many of the programs being promoted have the major downside of making little to no room for schema building and gateway subjects like science, social studies, art, music and PE. Likewise some of these programs effectively restrict or block any innovation or integration of other methods into the school day because they take up all the time.