Progressive Education May Be Ruining Our Classrooms

When I was pursuing my Master’s degree in Language and Literacy in the early 2010s, I remember feeling empowered by the research I came across. Prior to that, I had never fully understood the research on phonics and phonemic awareness, as it was not something thoroughly taught in my teacher preparation programs; I had never been equipped with the tools to properly assess reading and writing skills; I had never understood the role vocabulary acquisition and background knowledge play in helping students learn to read.

This research was already well-established when I learned it in 2011—and so I sometimes sit, dumbfounded, that the Science of Reading movement feels like new information to folks. But I can see why. Most people did not study literacy in pursuit of a Master’s Degree. Most did not receive adequate instruction in how to properly assess, design, and implement quality literacy instruction. And for over a decade, people subscribed to a progressive form of literacy instruction, grounded in a movement rather than evidence.

Even in the last school I taught at, a prominent independent school in Chicago’s historic Gold Coast, we subscribed to this progressive ideology, where culture and exposure to literate experiences seemed to matter more than structured and systematic literacy instruction, gradually released onto learners. It’s one of those IYKYK moments. I probably don’t even need to say the name of the program we were using. But I can tell you this: it completely lacked any instruction in spelling or decoding. And we had to use it.

I remember, vividly, sitting in a meeting with the special education team at the school, advocating fiercely for one of my third-grade students to receive intervention in phonics. She struggled to segment words, decode them properly, and spell words that required basic phoneme-grapheme correspondence. It was clear she needed extra help.

Unfortunately, her test scores weren’t low enough to warrant intervention, despite the fact that I had used several evidence-based, norm- and criterion-referenced assessments to pinpoint the challenges I was seeing. While I did the best that any hardworking third-grade teacher would, attempting to incorporate phonics, phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling into whole-group and small-group instruction, it wasn’t enough to close the gap—a gap that, in my opinion, was certainly closeable, especially in a well-resourced, supposedly elite independent school.

How did we get to a point where we didn’t value evidence-based assessments for literacy? I wondered. Why is it that one of the supposedly best schools in the area won’t subscribe to basic research on reading and writing?

How did we get here?

It stands to reason that it was simply reactive—a reaction to the equally flawed practices of the No Child Left Behind Act, which dictated education policy for much of the 2000s. After all, we tend to think in opposites in education, similar to how the proverbial pendulum tends to swing. We react to ineffective practices much in the way that one reacts to accidentally touching a hot pan on the stove: we pull our hands away from it quickly and run to the sink, running our fingers under cold water.

I agree that the test-centric practices of the NCLB era were not best for kids, but I also don’t believe that running to a polar opposite was best for kids.

The 2010s seemed to be defined by these polar opposites—education ventures, start-ups, and progressive education curricula, grounded not in evidence but, instead, in opposition to the restrictive policies of the NCLB era. I saw this firsthand while working in Silicon Valley for an education technology start-up company and network of microschools dedicated to personalized learning. Some of you may already know this story: specifically, the personalized learning playlists that ended up being entirely ineffective and unsustainable, but what I talk about far less is the flawed philosophy of education that undergirded the entire company.

In my three years at the company, I quickly became a black sheep, often in lively debate with the then Director of Education, who once told me that students could learn to read through playing Minecraft. “If they want to learn about it badly enough,” she said, in so many words, “then they will be motivated enough to read about it.”

It’s true that motivation is powerful—but I’m sorry, it’s not that powerful. The truth is, no motivation is strong enough if kids can’t decode basic CVC words.

In another instance, she and I debated the use of standards and assessments when designing curriculum and instruction. For whatever reason, she seemed vehemently against using either criterion- or norm-referenced standardized assessments as part of our approach to assessing reading. Still, I moved forward with assessment playbooks that incorporated phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, and spelling. My dissent earned me a glowing evaluation in that first year of working there, with her writing: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

It was clear she thought that by disagreeing with her, I couldn’t hold two opposing ideas in my mind simultaneously. It was disappointing at the time that her projection blinded her from seeing that was precisely what I was trying to do—design curriculum and instruction that gave kids a developmentally appropriate amount of voice and choice, while adhering to the research that was available to me at the time, which included structured assessments on basic foundational skills in literacy.

It is here that we can see how progressive education has actually become regressive: it’s because we are so busy trying not to be the side that we see as incorrect or misguided, that we, ourselves, are misguided in the advice we give teachers and the ways that we teach our students. And the effects speak for themselves.

Kids Can’t Read—Or Write

If you haven’t yet listened to “Sold a Story,” the reporting speaks for itself on the root causes of why so many children struggle to read. It’s because we subscribed to flawed practices, lacking an evidence base, for far too long. We’ve always known that there is no need for a “great debate” between phonics and whole language instruction. We’ve always known that phonics matters, but that helping kids see themselves as readers matters, too. It’s yet another instance of reacting to two seemingly opposing ideas, when solutions lie somewhere in the middle—in the both-and instead of the either-or.

It’s worse than our kids just not being able to read. In my work as a coach and consultant, teachers are constantly complaining that their kids “can’t write.” They provide a simple open-ended response, and students either look at them forlornly or write so poorly that it feels like a waste of instructional time to have them write in the first place. Progressive education might have us believe that “writing just isn’t their learning style,” but the reality is, writing cannot and should not be a modality that students can opt out of. It’s an essential modality, critical to their success as future adults and human beings in a democratic society.

Our Classrooms Lack Structure and Accountability

© Make Teaching Sustainable

I don’t disagree with the charge to give students more agency, voice, and choice in the classroom. In fact, I champion it. Yet again, we must consider why we are giving students agency, voice, and choice in the classroom, though. Is it because we are reacting to the overly controlling pedagogies of the No Child Left Behind era? Or is it because it’s actually leading to positive outcomes in student learning?

Unfortunately, I see too many classrooms that lack structure and accountability—all in the name of voice and choice. The reality is that voice and choice must be structured and scaffolded like any other practice in our classrooms. Moreover, we must use evidence to prove that the degree of voice and choice we are providing students is actually educative. If agency, voice, and choice result in students not learning, then it’s neither effective nor educative.

This rings true, as well, for classrooms that are overly structured, run in the image of an authoritarian government, providing students with little to no voice or choice. This is not good for kids either, and results in kids getting to college, unable to think for themselves, problem-solve, or tolerate the uncertainties of being an adult.

Teachers Aren’t Assessing

This lack of structure and accountability, I believe, comes from a fear of appearing strict or “not child-centered.” But we must have the courage to ask ourselves: if our classrooms are not leading to the desired learning outcomes, and if our classrooms lack structure and accountability so much that they become chaotic and uneducative, then are we really being child-centered?

This lack of structure and accountability is evident not only in classroom management practices but also in assessment practices. It’s admirable to move past the institutionalization of the 2000s, when learning was all about performing well on standardized assessments, but that doesn’t mean we stop assessing altogether. Instead, it should push us to find more humanizing and more sustainable forms of assessment, to ensure that our kids are learning what they need to learn to be successful and productive adults—whatever that should look like for every individual child.

Progressive Can Be Regressive

I say “we” in this context because none of us are entirely immune to it, myself included. I have taught simply for the sake of being progressive, blind to the fact that doing so isn't really progressive at all. In fact, I’d argue that it can be regressive if we’re not mindful.

And so, I invite you, as we weather many impending changes in the education system, to reconsider your definition of progressive education. Is it a style of progressive education that is simply operating in stark opposition to an ideology? Or is it a brand of progressive education that is looking to solve current problems with evidence-based practices?

We must push ourselves to live in the gray, to embrace evidence-based practices that live in the both-and—and resist the urge to live in the black-and-white territory of the either-or.

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