Scientists know how to teach kids to read. But are our schools using their methods?

T

zippy remembers exactly when she realized Chaim was going to struggle with reading. They were sitting at the kitchen table, a worksheet in front of them. Chaim was supposed to identify the letters of the alphabet and their accompanying sounds.

“He got maybe 20 percent of it right,” Tzippy recalls.

She brushed her concerns aside. After all, he was only in kindergarten, and the school year had just begun. But the year progressed, and he made little progress. Then Covid hit. Chaim’s school closed and shifted to remote learning.

“Chaim’s reading got worse,” Tzippy says, “but I thought it was because he was learning over Zoom.”

Tzippy assumed Chaim’s reading would pick up once he was back in the classroom, but as a precaution, she arranged for him to be in a smaller class for first grade.

Initially, things seemed to improve. Chaim was finally able to make sense of letters and sounds, and he’d bring home books to read aloud for homework. While his reading was halting and reluctant, Tzippy focused on his improvement from the year before.

Then, one afternoon, Chaim had a friend over, and Tzippy overheard him reading.

“His friend flew through the words,” she remembers. “And it was a book I never imagined could be at Chaim’s grade level.”

She felt unease deep in the pit of her stomach and called Chaim’s teacher. The teacher wasn’t worried, though.

“Just practice,” she said. “Every child learns at his own pace.”

The teacher explained to Tzippy how she tracked the students’ progress: The students were separated into groups in which they read at their own levels, starting from A and progressing to G.  Now Tzippy had a way to gauge Chaim’s progress — and she was very disturbed by what she discovered.

“He was stalled at the same level all year,” Tzippy says.

Tzippy started practicing reading with Chaim every night, but nothing changed. His reading was painful to listen to — he stumbled over the words and read with little expression — and his frustration was rising. Sometimes he refused to do his homework.

Tzippy consulted with the teacher several more times throughout the year. Each time, she got the same response: “Just be patient,” she’d tell her. “It takes some kids longer to catch on.”

By this point, Tzippy decided it was time to seek answers outside of school. She called Malky, her childhood friend who still lived back home in New York and was now a reading specialist.

Malky listened to Tzippy’s description of Chaim’s reading issues, then told her that maybe Chaim needed to learn to read a different way.

“Use the Orton-Gillingham Method,” she advised.

Tzippy had no idea what that was, but she assumed Chaim’s teacher would know. However, when she asked her about it, his teacher had never heard of it either.