Murder Your Darlings: A Scientific Response to The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research

Abstract

Ms. Garan maintains that Timothy Shanahan has misrepresented not only her own arguments but the findings of the National Reading Panel. WRITERS KNOW how easy it is to be seduced by their own cleverness. Words and ideas have a way of turning our heads as they take on lives of their own. However, the time comes when good writers must harden their hearts, sharpen the axe, and murder their darlings.1 The same must be said of good scientists. Even more so than with writing, ethical scientists must approach their work with humility and discipline and resist the temptation to indulge their own pet notions at the expense of the truth and in defiance of the evidence. Ultimately, scientists must accept the evidence and, when the time comes, they must be the first to pick up the axe and murder their own darlings. It is this fundamental precept that defenders of the Report of the National Reading Panel (NRP) have not faced. As a result, instead of an evidence-based guide that can inform practice in reading instruction, we are faced with a biased report characterized by misreported, overgeneralized findings that do not inform but rather mandate education policy -- ironically -- in the name of science. Since the NRP cannot find it in its heart to murder its own darlings, I will invoke my right as a consumer and victim of that research and do it for them. To those outside the field of reading, the never-ending Reading Wars must appear to be much ado about nothing: an annoying philosophical quarrel indulged in by professionals who have planted themselves on opposing sides of the phonics versus whole-language fence. What I hope readers will take away from this article is that the field of reading is only the first stop in the federal takeover of public education. It is important that Kappan readers realize that the tactics used to control reading instruction are directed at all fields of education and that we are all vulnerable to the scientific revolution of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Therefore, we all need to understand the mentality and the tactics of those who are promoting scientific research as the cure-all for what ails the schools. The ethical and procedural imperatives of good science are now particularly relevant to all areas of education. A Brief History of the NRP At the request of Congress, a National Reading Panel was established in consultation with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the U.S. Department of Education. The panel's mission was to conduct a comprehensive review of the research related to reading in order to find a convergence of evidence and thus determine the most effective methods for teaching beginning reading.2 At the outset, the panel circumscribed its comprehensive review of reading research by restricting the studies it included in its report to those that employed the standards of psychological and medical research conducted to determine the effectiveness of based interventions, medications, or medical procedures proposed for use in the fostering of robust health and psychological development and the prevention or treatment of disease.3 Thus the NRP imposed the model of medical research on a complex, behaviorally based discipline -- a choice that now permeates all areas of NCLB legislation. Predictably, the release of the NRP report in April 2000 generated a barrage of criticism that ranged from the philosophical unbalance in the makeup of the panel, to the misreporting of the findings in the panel's summary, to flawed research procedures, to the philosophical/political stance the panel advocated under the guise of science and objectivity.4 Perhaps because of growing resistance to NCLB and to the NRP report, key players in the federal research and publication arena have written a book to convince and compel doubters. Because the book is nearly 500 pages in length and because it is a series of chapters, each dealing with a different facet of reading research, it is difficult to respond to each segment individually. …